EARLY TORNADO CHASERS in the US, from Ben Franklin through the 20th century, profiled in a lively history.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS and science, elegantly explored in a concise meditation on Euclid’s “Elements”.

INSIDE THE WORLD OF hallucinations with Oliver Sacks, the Willy Wonka of the human brain. Fun, informative.

TOUCHING, POETIC MEMOIR of a life spent studying a group of endangered orcas in Alaska. Vivid, impassioned.

ENTERTAINING, ACCESSIBLE LOOK at particle physics, the Large Hadron Collider, the search for the Higgs Boson.

FASCINATING SOCIAL HISTORY of “pseudoscience” debates focuses on Velikovsky’s “worlds in collision” theory.

A MARVELOUSLY ENJOYABLE TOUR of so-called “living fossils”—the world’s oldest (and strangest) organisms.

INSIDE ARTISANAL MARIJUANA culture in Holland and the US. Fascinating topic marred by smug, annoying writing.

WHY AND HOW we were the only human species to survive, impeccably explored by a leading paleoanthropologist.

JOKEY, CHATTY TOUR through the fringes of science, from Ben Franklin’s electrocuted turkey to nuking the moon.