New Books Added November 2014

These books, primarily fun reads in math and science, were added to the Jones Library collections in November. Most were gifts from kind donors.1 If you notice that Adventures among Ants is checked out, I might be the one reading it over Christmas break.

Adventures among ants : A global safari with a cast of trillions.
Moffett, Mark W.  Berkeley : University of California Press, 2010.  
BC call number: 595.796 M695a

Publisher description: Intrepid international explorer, biologist, and photographer Mark W. Moffett,"The Indiana Jones of Entomology,” takes us around the globe on a strange and colorful journey in search of the hidden world of ants. In tales from Nigeria, Indonesia, the Amazon, Australia, California, and elsewhere, Moffett recounts his entomological exploits and provides fascinating details on how ants live and how they dominate their ecosystems through strikingly human behaviors, yet at a different scale and a faster tempo. Moffett’s spectacular close-up photographs shrink us down to size, so that we can observe ants in familiar roles; warriors, builders, big-game hunters, and slave owners. We find them creating marketplaces and assembly lines and dealing with issues we think of as uniquely human, including hygiene, recycling, and warfare. Adventures among Ants introduces some of the world’s most awe-inspiring species and offers a startling new perspective on the limits of our own perception.

Cosmological enigmas : Pulsars, quasars, & other deep-space questions. Kidger, Mark R. Baltimore : The Johns Hopkins University Press, c2007.
BC call number: 523.1 K46c
Also available as an ebook

Publisher description: The universe is big. Really big. And it gets bigger every day. In Cosmological Enigmas, Mark Kidger weaves together history, science, and science fiction to consider questions about the bigness of space and the strange objects that lie trembling at the edge of infinity.

What are quasars, blazars, and gamma-ray bursters? Could we ever travel to the stars? Can we really expect aliens to contact us? From the profound (what evidence do we have to support the big bang theory?) to the bizarre (can there be more than one universe and, if so, how many dimensions does it possess?) to the everyday-yet-profound (why is the sky dark at night?), Kidger explains not only what we know but how we came to know it. Reflecting on how stars shine and what may lie beyond the edge of the universe, Kidger takes us on the ultimate cosmic journey.

Dinosaurs without bones : Dinosaur lives revealed by their trace fossils.
Martin, Anthony J.  First Pegasus Books cloth edition.  New York :Pegasus Books, 2014.
BC call number: 597.9 M379d

Publisher Description Welcome to the world of ichnology, the study of traces and trace fossils—such as tracks, trails, burrows, nests, toothmarks, and other vestiges of behavior—and how through these remarkable clues, we can explore and intuit the rich and complicated lives of dinosaurs. With a unique, detective-like approach, interpreting the forensic clues of these long-extinct animals that leave a much richer legacy than bones, Martin brings the wild world of the Mesozoic to life for the twenty-first century reader.

Everyday calculus: Discovering the hidden math all around us.
Fernandez, Oscar E. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.
BC call number:  515.F363e

Publisher’s Description: Calculus. For some of us, the word conjures up memories of ten-pound textbooks and visions of tedious abstract equations. And yet, in reality, calculus is fun, accessible, and surrounds us everywhere we go. In Everyday Calculus, Oscar Fernandez shows us how to see the math in our coffee, on the highway, and even in the night sky.

Fernandez uses our everyday experiences to skillfully reveal the hidden calculus behind a typical day's events. He guides us through how math naturally emerges from simple observations--how hot coffee cools down, for example--and in discussions of over fifty familiar events and activities. Fernandez demonstrates that calculus can be used to explore practically any aspect of our lives, including the most effective number of hours to sleep and the fastest route to get to work. He also shows that calculus can be both useful--determining which seat at the theater leads to the best viewing experience, for instance--and fascinating--exploring topics such as time travel and the age of the universe. Throughout, Fernandez presents straightforward concepts, and no prior mathematical knowledge is required. For advanced math fans, the mathematical derivations are included in the appendixes. Fernandez also maintains an expanding library of interactive demonstrations tied to the book's content at his site surroundedbymath.com.

Whether you're new to mathematics or already a curious math enthusiast, Everyday Calculus invites you to spend a day discovering the calculus all around you. The book will convince even die-hard skeptics to view this area of math in a whole new way.

Frank Wesley : Exploring faith with a brush.  
Wray, Naomi.  Auckland, N.Z. : Pace Pub., 1993.
BC call number: 567.9 M379d

My description: Frank Wesley was born in India, and his art explored his Christianity and its meaning within an Indian milieu, including painting techniques from the region. Regional influences from his travel and study later in life included Japanese, U.S, and Australian landscapes and themes. The book includes reproductions of 125 works with explication and biographical detail. For more information about Wesley and his work, see: http://www.frankwesleyart.com/

How not to be wrong : the power of mathematical thinking.
Ellenberg, Jordan.  New York : The Penguin Press, 2014.
BC call number: 510.E45h

Publisher's description:  In How Not to Be Wrong, Jordan Ellenberg shows us that math isn't confined to abstract incidents that never occur in real life, but rather touches everything we do--the whole world is shot through with it. Math allows us to see the hidden structures underneath the messy and chaotic surface of our world. It's a science of not being wrong, hammered out by centuries of hard work and argument. Armed with the tools of mathematics, we can see through to the true meaning of information we take for granted: How early should you get to the airport? What does "public opinion" really represent? Why do tall parents have shorter children? Who really won Florida in 2000? And how likely are you, really, to develop cancer? How Not to Be Wrong presents the surprising revelations behind all of these questions and many more, using the mathematician's method of analyzing life and exposing the hard-won insights of the academic community to the layman--minus the jargon. Ellenberg pulls from history as well as from the latest theoretical developments to provide those not trained in math with the knowledge they need.          

                                                                   

The uncanny.
Royle, Nicholas.  Manchester, UK : Manchester University Press, 2003.
BC Call number: 809.93353 R815

Publisher’s description: This is the first book-length study of the uncanny, an important concept for contemporary thinking and debate across a range of disciplines and discourses, including literature, film, architecture, cultural studies, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and queer theory. Much of this importance can be traced back to Freud's essay of 1919, "The uncanny," where he was perhaps the first to foreground the distinctive nature of the uncanny as a feeling of something not simply weird or mysterious but, more specifically, as something strangely familiar.

As a concept and a feeling, however, the uncanny has a complex history going back to at least the Enlightenment. Nicholas Royle offers a detailed historical account of the emergence of the uncanny, together with a series of close readings of different aspects of the topic. Following a major introductory historical and critical overview, there are chapters on the death drive, déjà-vu, "silence, solitude and darkness," the fear of being buried alive, doubles, ghosts, cannibalism, telepathy, and madness, as well as more "applied" readings concerned, for example, with teaching, politics, film, and religion. 

This is a major critical study that will be welcomed by students and academics but will also be of interest to the general reader.

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1.  Thanks! And, yes, we welcome donations, particularly recent imprints that fit BC’s curricular needs. We do reserve the right to pick and choose from anything donated, adding some to the collection and putting others on our “free book” shelf.