"This book is an attempt to tell the stories behind sounds that might otherwise seem mundane or ordinary," note nature writers Michaela Vieser and Isaac Yuen. This cosmopolitan sound collection opens with a background hiss that was detected in 1964: astronomers first blamed it on pigeons roosting in their antenna before realizing that it was cosmic background radiation from the Big Bang. The book also features icebergs crackling and music mysteriously created by tapping stone pillars in a medieval Hindu temple in India.
Bats are amazing, thinks neurobiologist Yossi Yovel. With almost 1,500 species, they are the most diverse order among mammals -- making up more than 20% -- and are the only mammals that "truly fly". They live across six continents on Earth -- in colonies of millions or alone in crevices. Most are insect eaters, but some eat fruits and pollen. Others dine on vertebrates, and three species drink blood. Yet, as Yovel admits in his wonderful book, we still cannot answer philosopher Thomas Nagel's famous question, "What is it like to be a bat?"
Although charlatans have existed since ancient times, the word is derived from ciarlatani, an Italian word -- which roughly translates to 'loudmouths' -- for hawkers of miracle cures in seventeenth-century Italy. Now, journalists Moisés Naím and Quico Toro observe that technologies such as the Internet, social media and artificial intelligence allow charlatans to target many more people, much more precisely. To the tech giants, "charlatans aren't enemies; they are lucrative customers", this compelling and disturbing book argues.
"Darwin was impossibly cute," writes journalist and dog-lover Melanie Kaplan of her first beagle puppy, acquired from a breeder. She grew up unaware of the growing animal-rights movement in the 1970s, and the issues raised by scientific experimentation on animals, including dogs. Her experience of adopting a beagle rescued after spending nearly four years in a research laboratory led her to write this passionate, conflicted book in which she interviews scientists who conduct animal experiments -- often with mixed feelings.
Pompeii, an ancient Roman city in Italy, was buried by Mount Vesuvius's eruption in ad 79. Its excavation from 1748 marked the emergence of modern archaeology. But around one-third of the city is still underground, notes archaeologist Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director-general of Pompeii's archaeological park, in his scintillating history of this complex site. In 1974, further disturbing remains were found: two adults and a child "cowering in a tiny cellar space", all male and not blood relatives, according to DNA analysis. Andrew Robinson