A bold effort to create a new language that forces a “rethinking” of “thinking itself.”
Generating a new language for the book of life.
Life is not all about tidy genetic blueprints; it is influenced by "messy and capricious" elements so many levels that genes are “just ingredients for creating a palette of...possibilities,” writes Ball, a former longtime editor at Nature and author of many books about science and nature. He first examines old biological tenets gone wrong, such as the notion that one gene is equal to one protein, or that correcting single gene mutations can “cure” most diseases. Language, writes the author, is the only “human technology” that bears any resemblance to the “mechanism of life...undoubtedly because it is a kind of ‘organic technology’ as much a part of our biological nature as is our flesh and blood, our minds, our cultures." Like life, when “you reduce it to its component parts, you lose its meaning.” Later, the author continues, “meaning carries a lot of baggage in biology, and you’ll rarely see it used in an academic text on the topic. But it’s a crucial concept, because it conveys a large part of what distinguishes life from other states of matter.” Many DNA sequences linked to complex traits and diseases are outside the “coding” genome,” and genes that generate fins can be “readily redirected to make an arm…Rapid phenotypic change is possible precisely because so little is demanded of the genes themselves.” In showing that complex life is more “emergent” than “programmed,” Ball takes on many conventional notions about biology. “We are at the beginning of a profound rethinking of how life works,” he writes. Evolution has consistently invented new ways of creating living beings, and it will continue to do so. “The challenge,” writes the author, “is to find a good way of talking about these vital stratagems,” and his latest book offers plenty of food for thought for scientists in disciplines from medicine to engineering.
A bold effort to create a new language that forces a “rethinking” of “thinking itself.”Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2023
ISBN: 9780226826684
Page Count: 520
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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SEEN & HEARD
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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