Books for late summer: from genius genes to tyrannosaur musings

Science News,  August 5, 2006  by J.A. Miller

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Whether you go to a house at the beach or a cabin in the woods, selecting books to take along is a crucial part of vacation planning. As a Science News reader, you probably consult the "Books" section at the back of recent issues. But for your late-summer trips, we thought you might appreciate additional suggestions from our writers. Asked for their advice on science-related books, not necessarily new, they've come up with a surprising range of choices that you should--or perhaps shouldn't--consider packing. Happy travels.

--J.A. Miller, Editor in Chief

Who's Your Daddy? THE GENIUS FACTORY: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank

DAVID PLOTZ Random House, 2005

Nature or nurture: Which one has more pull? That question might have been answered by a project initiated in the early 1980s. The original idea was to coax some of the world's most intelligent and accomplished men--Nobel prize winners--to provide sperm to inseminate a select group of smart, driven, young women. The sperm bank's founder, ophthalmologist and eccentric millionaire Robert Graham, had expected to produce a crop of genius babies. However, this eugenics experiment was doomed from the beginning.

Only three Nobel prize winners deigned to contribute to the endeavor, and the sperm from these geriatric donors didn't get anyone pregnant. In a push to keep the specialized sperm-bank business afloat, Graham changed his focus. He decided to simply recruit accomplished men, then eventually to accept donations from practically any man who considered himself gifted--no questions asked.

As storyteller David Plotz details in The Genius Factory, 215 babies were born of the endeavor. They now range in age from preteens to early 20s. Plotz tracked down many people associated with the project and concluded that the "genius" genes aren't all they have been cracked up to be.

For example, Tom Legare, a pseudonym Plotz uses for one of the sperm bank's kids, flounders in school, becomes a teenage parent, and struggles with finding a focus in life. Legare's half-brother Alton, created by sperm from the same donor but born to a more affluent mother, who lives in a better school district, seems to excel at almost anything he tries. Most of the kids produced with the bank's help hover in the average range of intelligence and accomplishments, "genius" dads notwithstanding.

Plotz also points out that qualifying to donate to the sperm bank didn't guarantee success in life. Only one of the three Nobelists who made deposits to the bank ever acknowledged his involvement: William Shockley, winner of the 1956 prize in physics, whom Plotz describes as a confirmed racist whose lack of business acumen ultimately overshadowed his scientific successes.

The author manages to dig up a sordid assortment of other donors, including a Nobel winner's son who has no discernable job other than donating to multiple sperm banks. When Plotz eventually locates Tom and Alton's genetic father, he finds a man living in a filthy, one-bedroom house who had produced so many offspring through channels other than sperm banks that he can't afford to support them.

It's clear from the detailed and thorough reporting that Plotz was fascinated by his subject matter. This enthusiasm is contagious--it's easy to get caught up in the soap opera lives of many of the characters. However, some parts of the book, especially those giving

background information on the bank's history, become tedious. Overall, the thought-provoking text gives readers plenty to contemplate about how genes and environment shape people and their lives.--C. BROWNLEE

Code Breaking: A Toy Story POPCO

SCARLETT THOMAS Harcourt, 2005

It's a rare novel that includes not only a cake recipe but also a table of the first 1,000 prime numbers, a cryptic crossword puzzle, the frequency of occurrence of letters of the alphabet in English, and references to Fibonacci numbers, the continuum hypothesis, logic paradoxes, and other mathematical lore.

These elements play important roles in the entertaining, clever, and beguiling novel PopCo.

The story's heroine, Alice Butler, is a onetime crossword-puzzle compiler who works for a cool, up-and-coming toy company. She has already made her name as the creator of the product lines known as KidSpy, KidTec, and KidCracker, which are aimed at children who want to be spies, detectives, or code breakers.

Along with a coterie of other top "creatives" at her company, she finds herself at a secluded estate in the English countryside, charged with inventing the next great thing for teenage girls. As she goes through her vaguely sinister mind-camp experience, her thoughts return repeatedly to her own unusual background: a treasure-seeking father, a cryptanalyst grandfather, and a mathematician grandmother striving to prove the Riemann hypothesis, perhaps the most famous unsolved problem in mathematics.

As the stories of the past and present tangle and unwind, readers get fascinating glimpses of several different worlds, along with quick lessons on famous cryptograms, the psychology of marketing to girls, some fine points of sailing, homeopathic remedies, and the inscrutable game of Go. And there are puzzles for readers to ponder and solve as Alice tries to figure out who is sending her eerie messages, written in simple codes, and whether her grandfather left her a hidden key to a long-lost pirate treasure.