New & Recommended New & Recommended (June 01, 2005)

This month's picks from Frank Sanchez, head book buyer at Kepler's Books, have a science theme, with four books about biogenetics and the promise it holds for the future, and two about the effects of the atom bomb. And John Markoff of the New York Times writes about how the personal computing industry was shaped by the counterculture.

"Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human" by Michael Chorost is a touching and humorous story about how the author, a San Francisco writer, had a tiny computer imbedded in his head after he went completely deaf in his 30s. The funny part is how refrigerator magnets stick to his head and in his wit in writing about his experience. But it is also a thoroughly human story, explaining the science that gave him one of his senses back, in an artificial manner since his "hearing" hasn't been restored, just recreated.

"The Geneticist Who Played Hoops with My DNA: . . . And Other Masterminds from the Frontiers of Biotech" by David E. Duncan is a series of profiles of seven biotech scientists, what their work is about and what they hope to create in the future. The author may be familiar to readers as an ABC-Nightline correspondent and National Public Radio (NPR) commentator.

"Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies - and What It Means to be Human" by Joel Garreau is an examination of the how genetic engineering is leading to what could be the next stage in human evolution.

"More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement" by Ramez Naam is also a look at the future of genetic engineering, but a more hopeful one. The author embraces the future of bioengineering and the promise it holds not just to cure illness but to make people smarter, stronger, and to live longer.

"What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer" by John Markoff is a trip down a local memory lane as the author shows how there were crossover connections between the California counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s and the budding personal computer industry scientists.

"Before the Fallout: From Marie Curie to Hiroshima" by Diana Preston is an account of the period between the first discovery of radioactive materials in 1898 to the detonation of the bomb that ended the war in the Pacific in 1945.

"The Bomb: A Life" by Gerald DeGroot picks up where the previous book by Diana Preston ends, by looking at the Cold War history of the atomic bomb and the growing number of countries that became part of the nuclear club.

-- Don Kazak

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