Month: June 2013

Editor: John M. Lawrence Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press – 267 pages Book Review by: Deekay Daulat You may or may not remember your high school biology lessons but starfish belong to the class known as Asteroidea in the subphylum Asterozoa within the phylum Echinodermata in the Animal kingdom. So starfish are commonly called “asteroids” by biologists studying them. Other common echinoderms are: brittle and basket stars, crinoids, sand dollars, sea cucumbers, and sea urchins. With 30 authors contributing to the 20 chapters of this book, the reader gets an immense amount of information in it on starfish, also...

Author: Margaret W. Rossiter Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press Book Review by: Paiso Jamakar On the cover of this book is chemist Gertrude Elion who won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. She developed, along with a colleague, many important drugs. After winning the Prize she spoke about her early difficulties. The current book, published in 2011, is Volume 3 on women scientists by Margaret W. Rossiter, who teaches the history of science at Cornell. Her two earlier books on this subject, whose titles are mentioned in her brief profile at the end of this book review,...

Editors: Alison Booth and Kelly J. Mays Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company – 1349 pages Book Review by: Paiso Jamakar This compact but thick book contains a variety of numerous writings that constitute a complete course in college-level literature. Among other material, it has 35 stories, 206 poems and eight plays. As the editors describe it, it is “a teaching anthology focused on the actual tasks, challenges and questions faced by college students and instructors… that offers practical advice to help students transform their first impressions of literary works into fruitful discussions and meaningful essays, and it helps students...

Editors: Keith J. Holyoak and Robert G. Morrison Publisher: Oxford University Press – 836 pages Book Review by: Nano Khilnani For all those who want to learn how the mind works, this is a must-read book. Thinking and reasoning were, until about a century ago, subjects studied under the umbrella of philosophy. But since then they have became very important areas of scientific investigation under the modern fields of cognitive psychology, particularly neuroscience. Science requires data to test theories and to establish results as facts. It is refreshing to know that whereas in the past, thinking and reasoning were...