Books for late summer: from genius genes to tyrannosaur musings

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

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The author weaves genuine mathematics into a compelling, quirky story. She makes it seem natural for sophisticated mathematical ideas and discussions to come up in everyday life. A few of her examples and explanations may appear mathematically naive, but they don't get in the way of the story.

PopCo is exhilarating with its unusual blend of modern commerce, mathematics, high-seas adventure, romance, and girl-coming-of-age sensibility. However, the ending seems a bit flat and perfunctory, given the richness and intrigue of what comes before. Although the finale resolves all the mysteries and dilemmas posed in the story, elements of it aren't believable. Nonetheless, PopCo is a highly original, fast-paced story that will be entertaining and accessible even to people proclaiming a fear of math.--I. PETERSON

Thinking about Tomorrow FIELD NOTES FROM A CATASTROPHE: Man, Nature, and Climate Change

ELIZABETH KOLBERT Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006

More than a century ago, the first scientist to calculate that industrilization would warm the planet was pleased by the prospect.

In a pithy and powerful introduction to global warming, author Elizabeth Kolbert includes the story of Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius. When he started studying climate dynamics in the 1890s, scientists already knew that atmospheric carbon dioxide traps heat and warms the Earth. Working with pen and paper for a year, Arrhenius arrived at figures for how much the doubling of atmosphere carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels would eventually raise the average global temperature. Surprisingly, given that some of his assumptions were dead wrong, Arrhenius' results and today's findings match.

Arrhenius wrote, "We hope to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates." He was working in a different era, Kolbert reminds us, and experiencing Scandinavian weather. She presents the case for human-driven climate change primarily through evidence that she witnesses firsthand and testimony from the experts she visits. None of them looks forward to Arrhenius' equable clime.

The book grew out of three articles published in 2005 in the New Yorker. Kolbert writes in the preface that the articles and book have the same goal: "to convey, as vividly as possible, the reality of global warming." She builds her case powerfully from material presented in an understated, observational tone.

Kolbert's concrete observations give the book surprising charm. The sections aren't just boluses of doom. A few deft details in each section evoke a personality or a place.

Kolbert opens the book with scenes from her travels around Alaska_ She visits the Inupiat village of Shishmaref (population 591), where hunters tell her they used to drive snowmobiles some 20 miles across seasonal ice to catch seals. Now, by the time the seals arrive, the ice at just half that distance has thawed to the consistency of a slush-puppie ice drink.

What's more, the ice no longer forms early enough in winter to protect the village from storm surges. Incoming water has ripped houses into the sea, and the residents have voted to abandon their homes and relocate.