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 also details how scientific collaboration led to the remarkably fast identification of the severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, virus in 2003.

Other sections describe situations in which collective thinking misfires, such as the periodic tendency of investors to create portfolio-busting stock market bubbles.

Surowiecki uses research on collective wisdom to mount a rousing defense of capitalism and democracy.

So why does Gladwell's book, but not Surowiecki's, set cash registers ringing? Sometimes, it seems, the crowd just needs to wise up.--B. BOWER

A Curious Gaze at the Heavens FIND THE CONSTELLATIONS

H.A, REY Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976

ZOO IN THE SKY: A Book of Animal Constellations

JACQUELINE MITTON National Geographic Society, 1998

ONCE UPON A STARRY NIGHT: A Book of Constellations

JACQUELINE MITTON National Geographic Society, 2004

If summer takes you to a place where the stars shine bright, let me recommend a guide to the heavens. Actually, you may want to look up at the skies even if you find yourself citybound.

A Greenwich Village rooftop isn't the best place to gaze at the heavens, but that's where I learned to use a telescope. It was during my one and only observational-astronomy course, and I was in my sophomore year at New York University. The roof of Shimkin Hall, one block south of Washington Square Park, featured an old water tower and a concrete observing area with several 6-inch telescopes. It also had a great view of the Empire State Building, which came in handy during those not infrequent evenings when a combination of the city's smog, bright lights, and clouds made it fruitless to peer into the night sky.

But if the viewing was less than memorable, I still recall the book somewhat sheepishly recommended by my astronomy teacher Olav Redi. Find the Constellations by children's author H.A. Rey, best known for Curious George, is hardly a college-level text. It's a thin book with simple pictures and words: "At night time, when the stars are out, the sky all of a sudden becomes a huge Picture Book. You can look up and see a lion and a whale, an eagle, a swan, a dog, a hare, and a lot other pictures; that is, of course, if you know how to find them."

To my untrained eyes, the book was invaluable for its straightforward depictions of the constellations, with and without lines connecting the stars into the shapes that give the constellations their names. Without those diagrams, I couldn't have picked out the Great Bear, let alone the bear's paws. The book's year-round views of the sky, as seen from the middle and northern United States (latitude 40[degrees]), gave me the first real feel for the celestial sphere--the movement of stars day to day and season to season relative to Earth.

I recently purchased a used copy of Find the Constellations. For two more-recent publications for beginning sky watchers, I recommend Zoo in the Sky: A Book of Animal Constellations and Once Upon a Starry Night: A Book of Constellations. Both books have gorgeous illustrations by Christina Balit, and Jacqueline Mitton provides charming descriptions of the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses whose stories underlie longstanding interpretations of the heavenly patterns.--R. COWEN