A Surgeon for All Seasons Cles, Broadsheets and Pamphlets, Often Under the Pseudonym Old Hubert

tenements and factories as the Industrial Revolution gathered pace. London’s water and air became grossly contaminated, and overcrowding provided ideal conditions for diseases such as tuberculosis. Open fires, combustible clothing and dangerous manual work meant that fractures, lacerations, burns and hernias were common. The conditions Parkinson saw as he travelled on his rounds, often stricken with gout, might well have stirred his social and political awakening. He lived in turbulent times, marked by the Seven Years War, the War of American Inde- pendence and the Napoleonic Wars. High taxes to pay for these military adventures coincided with civilian unrest, influenced by the French Revolution of 1789. Parkinson became increasingly radical, advocating votes for all (at a time when approximately 2% of Britons were enfranchised), parliamentary reform, education of the poor and unfettered discussion of politics and religion. In 1792, he joined the London Corresponding Soci- MEDICAL HISTORY ety, which campaigned for parliamentary reform and promoted representation of all men. Parkinson became adroit at the social media of his age — producing periodical arti- A surgeon for all seasons cles, broadsheets and pamphlets, often under the pseudonym Old Hubert. Tilli Tansey extols a biography of the radical who gave In 1794, the radicalized Parkinson was his name to Parkinson’s disease. caught up in the Popgun Plot. The conspiracy seems to have been ‘fake news’, concocted by the authorities to justify restrictive legisla- arkinson’s disease is the second most Parkinson lived tion. Summoned to Whitehall to be exam- common neurodegenerative con- in the same house in ined, with Prime Minister William Pitt (the dition in the world, with 6 million Hoxton, east London, Younger) leading the questioning, Parkinson Ppeople affected. But who was Parkinson? In for most of his life. He admitted to writing inflammatory — even a splendid new book, historian of geology practised medicine seditious — pamphlets, but was never Cherry Lewis introduces us to a fascinat- there with his father, arrested. How he escaped is not clear. ing, multifaceted Enlightenment figure: and then his son, in a Next, Parkinson turned his talents to books the intellectually curious, politically active business that would on geology and general medical advice. As a and socially concerned London surgeon- span at least four gen- young apothecary, he had attended anatomi- apothecary James Parkinson (1755–1824). erations. In a seven- The Enlightened cal lectures by the celebrated surgeon John The Enlightened Mr. Parkinson reveals a year apprenticeship, Mr. Parkinson: Hunter, who, like many medics, collected man involved in endeavours as varied as the he learned to make The Pioneering fossils and encouraged their study. Parkinson Life of a Forgotten founding of the Geological Society and the medicines, diagnose English Surgeon started his own collection. In 1807, he was alleged Popgun Plot to assassinate George III. ailments and purge, CHERRY LEWIS invited to join like-minded individuals such Perhaps his most extraordinary accomplish- bleed and blister his Icon: 2017. as chemist Humphrey Davy and physician ment was the prescient 1817 monograph An patients, mostly lower- William Babington in founding the Geolog- Essay on the Shaking Palsy — the first exten- middle-class but with a smattering of the rich. ical Society. Struggling to reconcile biblical sive description of the disorder that would be He then spent six months as a surgical dresser authority with the fossil record, which sug- named after him. As Lewis reveals, the path to at what is now the Royal London Hospital. gested the existence of animal life hundreds this historic discovery was long and winding. During Parkinson’s lifetime, Lewis shows, of thousands of years before humanity, he Hoxton’s open fields disappeared beneath embraced the theory of Swiss naturalist

NEW IN Drones and the Future of Armed Conflict: Ethical, Legal, and Strategic Implications PAPERBACK Eds David Cortright, Rachel Fairhurst & Kristen Wall (Univ. Chicago Press, 2017) This cogent and compelling edited volume on the burgeoning use of drones Highlights of this in warfare takes a hard look at issues such as accountability, even as it praises season’s releases. the technology. Contributors highlight the questionable efficacy and ethics surrounding the deployment of drones, particularly in Pakistan, and stress the need for international guidelines on their use.

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Jean-André de Luc that geological history ENERGY was a sequence of seven vast periods, each corresponding to a day of creation. In his medical work, Parkinson contin- ued to demonstrate a concern for social Muscle, steam justice. His 1799 book Medical Admoni- tions was intended to help poor families to recognize disease and understand when to pay for medical advice. In the following and combustion years, cheaper, condensed versions found a ready market with an increasingly lit- erate working class. Parkinson became Roger Fouquet applauds Vaclav Smil’s vast survey of involved with local issues of late-eight- the technologies powering human progress. eenth-century medicine: child labour, asylums and vaccination. His investiga- tion of the horrific conditions endured aclav Smil’s Energy and Civilization role of hunting in by destitute children working in facto- is a monumental history of how the extinction of the ries brought about local improvements, humanity has harnessed muscle, mammoths. 30 years before any national legislation. Vsteam and combustion to build palaces and From the fifth mil- He was also one of the first people in skyscrapers, light the night and land on the lennium bc to the London to offer smallpox vaccinations Moon. Want to learn about the number of middle of the second (he gave a dissecting microscope to his labourers needed to build Egypt’s pyramids of millennium ad, civili- friend Edward Jenner, who pioneered the Giza, or US inventor Thomas Edison’s battles zations such as those of procedure). Less successfully, he served with Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse ancient Egypt, Rome as a medical attendant to a private asy- to electrify homes and cities, or the upscaling Energy and and China through lum. At a trial in 1810, he was involved of power stations and blast furnaces in the Civilization: A to medieval and in a notorious false commitment of a twentieth century? Look no further. History Renaissance Europe VACLAV SMIL sane woman, for which he was widely Admired by Microsoft founder and MIT Press: 2017. collectively invented criticized. That experience prompted a philanthropist Bill Gates, Smil is a prolific technologies reliant book the following year — Mad-houses: writer on energy and environmental issues, on muscle power, wind and water, along with Observations on the Act for Regulating with a penchant for history. This is especially increasingly refined wheels and pulleys. Smil Mad-houses. Many of its suggestions for valuable today, when renewables such as explains that the shift from human to animal the humane treatment and legal pro- wind and solar power are set to disrupt the power and the use of irrigation, fertilizer and tection of the mentally ill were finally fossil-fuel-based energy system. Our use of crop rotation were key to increasing agricul- incorporated in the 1845 Lunacy Act. energy has been transformed since the late tural yields and ultimately population size. Given Parkinson’s broad interests, nineteenth century with the extraction of oil He reveals how settlements in warm climates, passions and activities, it is perhaps sur- and natural gas, the diffusion of technologies such as Mesoamerica or India, depended on prising that his name lives on because of driven by electricity and an area of agricultural one essay — politely received at the time the expansion of power- land 60 times greater but not widely known. His description distribution networks. SOLVING ONE than that of the aver- of the signs and symptoms of the disor- History offers guidance age town at the time. It der are still exemplary, although he had on paradigm shifts, and ENVIRONMENTAL was 100 times greater little to suggest in the way of causation how we adapt. in colder climates such or therapy. More than 50 years later, the The book is a signifi- PROBLEM OFTEN LEADS as northern Europe, great French neurologist Jean-Martin cantly revised, updated TO ANOTHER. where forests providing Charcot coined the expression maladie and more detailed ver- fuel for heat were also de Parkinson, and the essay began to gain sion of Smil’s Energy in needed. The ability a wider audience. I hope Lewis’s book will World History (Westview, 1994). It takes us to mine and use energy-dense fossil fuels do a similar job for the man himself. ■ back to prehistory to quantify the energy altered the ‘energy footprint’ of towns and expended by foragers, hunters and agrarian cities and allowed urban centres to become Tilli Tansey is professor of the history of societies. Smil uses evidence from the !Kung denser. Smil dwells on genius scientists modern medical sciences at Queen Mary, people in Botswana, the Maasai in Kenya and and heroic engineers of the first and sec- University of London. Alaskan whalers, and discusses 500,000-year- ond industrial revolutions between 1760 e-mail: [email protected] old spear tips found in South Africa and the and 1913, and the high-tech takeover

Stem Cell Dialogues The Genius of Birds Sheldon Krimsky (Columbia Univ. Press, 2017) Jennifer Ackerman (Penguin, 2017) Sociologist Sheldon Krimsky explores the history In a study scattered through with personal of stem-cell research through an unusual lens: observations, science writer Jennifer Ackerman Socratic dialogues. From the ethics of cloning extols the startling intelligence of birds. New to the politics of using embryonic stem cells, Caledonian crows can fashion tools, magpies the scenarios examine the achievements and recognize their own reflections and western controversies of regenerative medicine. scrub jays may hold “funerals”.

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of the twentieth century. energy-intensive and polluting consumption pollution have encouraged transitions away He is not a historian. There is no strong patterns, making them more vulnerable to from coal in Europe and China. Chinese narrative or testing of a central hypothesis. price shocks, trade-balance deficits, political investment in wind turbines and solar pan- But he does provide economic and geopo- pressures from energy companies and pollu- els has driven down the price of renewable litical context. For instance, he touches on tion. Furthermore, Smil warns, humanity’s power so that in many locations it is the the importance of the Organization of the ability to harness greater power could lead it cheapest source of electricity. Although it Petroleum Exporting Countries and the oil- down several very different pathways, includ- is too early to say, we could be witnessing price shocks of the 1970s in ushering in a new ing melting the entire Antarctic ice sheet and a dramatic new chapter in energy history. energy era. Larger petroleum reserves, alter- raising sea levels by 58 metres. Ultimately, But a lesson from history is that solving native energy sources and more efficient tech- he warns that the long-term survival of our one environmental problem often leads to nologies were frantically sought to minimize high‑energy civilization remains uncertain. another: increased energy consumption. the economic damage from the oil-price hike. Smil’s detailed review of military applica- Because of the vast literature on energy Smil concludes with some broader points. tions of energy is fascinating, and unusual. written since Smil’s 1994 history, this radically He notes that advances in the capacity to har- He notes, for instance, that the atomic bomb revised version is 60% longer. Structurally and ness energy have led to huge improvements in dropped on Hiroshima by US forces on in terms of message, the books are similar, human well-being, including greater mobility 6 August 1945 produced 63,000 gigajoules of however, probably because the new literature and illumination. However, he stresses that energy. On other negative aspects of energy has not fundamentally changed our inter- many political leaders in the twentieth cen- production and consumption, the book is pretation of the energy landscape. It is also a tury, from Vladimir Lenin to Franklin Delano weaker. Coal mining and nuclear accidents — credit to Smil’s original and enlightening way Roosevelt, have been let down by the promise such as the disasters in Chernobyl, Ukraine, of seeing energy in world history. Read it and of economic growth boosted by huge energy and Fukushima, Japan, in 1986 and 2011, be dazzled by the panoply of ways in which investments, such as hydroelectric dams and respectively — have scarred communities. Yet humanity has powered progress, with forces, nuclear power stations. These are not pana- the most lethal side-effects of energy use have materials and sheer blazing ingenuity. ■ ceas, because abundant energy is a necessary been car accidents and air pollution, each only but not sufficient condition for development. briefly mentioned. Traffic accidents cause Roger Fouquet is an associate professorial Similarly, energy subsidies — mostly almost 1.3 million deaths per year. Harder to research fellow at the Grantham Research for fossil-fuel production and consump- quantify, air pollution has also led to millions Institute on Climate Change and the tion — may do more harm than good. of lost lives in the past 200 years. Environment at the London School of Running at around 6.5% of global gross Although these risks have been tolerated, Economics and Political Science. domestic product, they lock economies into Smil reminds us that concerns about air e-mail: [email protected]

The Worst of Times The Logician and the Engineer Paul B. Wignall (Princeton Univ. Press, 2017) Paul J. Nahin (Princeton Univ. Press, 2017) Palaeontologist Paul Wignall journeys through Proving that two heads are better than one in the tumultuous end of the Permian period, innovation, Paul Nahin examines how engineer some 260 million years ago, on supercontinent Claude Shannon used mathematics devised by Pangaea. The era’s catastrophic extinctions, he George Boole 90 years before to develop electrical suggests, could be linked to its unprecedented circuits — and traces the advancement of high levels of volcanism. technology such as the abstract ‘Turing machine’.

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PHILANTHROPY The politics of giving Anne-Emanuelle Birn reviews a survey of the new megaphilanthropy and its impact.

n January, Oxfam released its annual His breathless over- trajectories to big bucks — leaving room for zinger on inequality: the collective net view of the provenance, both colossal failure and large-scale impact. worth of the world’s poorest half (3.6 bil- giving style and domes- It often bypasses traditional support for edu- Ilion people) is equivalent to that of just 8 of tic impact of current cational and cultural institutions to invest in the wealthiest men. This figure was released US philanthropy catalysing issues, including gene editing and to coincide with the yearly gathering in finds it undemocratic. artificial intelligence. Davos, Switzerland, of economic and politi- Most egregiously, this Philanthropy remains gendered: men earn cal elites and celebrities, who publicly commit set-up heightens pri- fortunes and their wives or daughters give to advancing global well-being even as they vate influence in an them away, with little focus on gender equity safeguard conditions for private profiteering. era of plunging pub- The Givers: beyond reproductive rights. Still, women’s Each of the eight wealthiest men is a mega lic spending. Not all Wealth, Power, philanthropic networks (such as Women philanthropist, underwriting billions of philanthropists are and Philanthropy Moving Millions, based in New York City) dollars for medical research, public health, anti-government. Buf- in a New Gilded have emerged, perhaps portending change Age humanitarian causes and education. The fett calls for increased DAVID CALLAHAN around women’s political representation. bulk are familiar US names, including tech- taxes; Bloomberg Alfred A. Knopf: 2017. Callahan marvels at the ideological range nology gurus Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg wants philanthropy of philanthropic giving. Firmly for or against and Lawrence Ellison, investment oracle to “embolden”, not replace, government. issues ranging from the 2010 US Affordable Warren Buffett, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos Still, both continue to marshal soaring Care Act to climate change, it also spans sup- and media magnate (and politician) Michael wealth while their donations mount, mak- port of both liberal and conservative think Bloomberg. Health is much in their sights: ing them absurd reformers of the system that tanks such as, respectively, the Center for Zuckerberg has earmarked US$3 billion to empowers them. American Progress and the libertarian Cato “cure, prevent or manage” disease; Bloom Older-style “legacy” philanthropy (exem- Institute, both in Washington DC. (Think- berg has designated almost $1 billion to curb plified by New York City’s Rockefeller Foun- tank funding is a savvy way of bypassing laxly smoking and traffic fatalities; and Gates has dation) was based on slow accumulation from enforced prohibitions on political lobbying by ploughed some $20 billion into vaccine devel- mainline industries, with late-in-life or post- non-profit institutions.) Yet Callahan is trou- opment and global health. This group — with humous creation of perpetual, bureaucratized bled that the donors’ agenda-setting priori- many others in the top tier of the $700-billion ties do not reflect the public’s. He believes that US philanthropic sector — is the subject of philanthropists are more fiscally conservative David Callahan’s exposé, The Givers. and socially liberal than the general popula- As Callahan reveals, many philanthropists MANY WOULD tion, and are stronger advocates of market participate in the Giving Pledge, a brainchild solutions and technocratic fixes. Thus they of Gates and Buffett that invites the world’s ARGUE typically favour the latest medical innova- wealthiest to contribute the majority of their THAT IT IS TIME TO tion over ensuring decent housing conditions. assets to addressing “society’s most press- Callahan’s discussion of science and medi- ing problems”, echoing steel tycoon Andrew cine is circumscribed. One concern is that Carnegie’s 1889 homily ‘The Gospel of REIN IN therapies for the wealthy, such as precision Wealth’. Drawing on insider interviews, Calla- THE BILLIONAIRES. oncology, garner undue attention. Prospects han discovers that many pledgers are initially for accelerating research where government humble about giving. This contrasts with grant-making is bureaucratic and cautious, the arrogance enabling their profitmaking foundations. Callahan is more interested in he fears, are accompanied by spending cuts journeys, which spills over into a sense of those with fast and vast fortunes derived from leading to the privatization of science. Cal- “hyperagency” — sociologist Paul Schervish’s finance and technology. Overnight tycoons lahan says little about the impact of such term for elites’ sense of entitlement. prefer to ‘give while they live’, spending down changes, but foreseeable problems include Callahan goes beyond such sentiments huge fortunes with huge donations. Their ratcheting down peer-review processes and to explore the scientific, social and political venture philanthropy is characterized by risk- ignoring already underfunded arenas such implications of largesse in the new gilded age. taking, mirroring the donors’ own business as occupational health.

Into the Heart of Our World Heavenly Mathematics David Whitehouse (Pegasus, 2017) Glen Van Brummelen (Princeton Univ. Press, 2017) In this vivid imagined trek into our planet’s Once a mainstay of mathematics, spherical depths, science journalist David Whitehouse trigonometry no longer appears on school details the technological advances that are curricula. Here, Glen Van Brummelen reasserts making possible astonishing discoveries, from the field’s importance, sharing in illuminating the origins of seismology to the bacteria living detail how it figured in astronomy, cartography deep in Earth’s crust. and our understanding of Earth’s rotation.

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One of the most contentious targets METEOROLOGY of activist philanthropy is education. Among others, the Walton family — heirs to the Walmart fortune — Zuckerberg and hedge-fund maestro Bill Ackman have Weather makers given enormous sums to charter schools, facilities that are publicly funded, privately administered and sometimes for-profit. Jim Fleming assesses a history of US governmental Illustrating how fraught this philanthropic intervention in the atmosphere. involvement is, in Newark, New Jersey, a top-down school-reform strategy disre- garded community priorities, generated ake it rain,” commanded provided a diversion wide resentment, exacerbated inequity choleric US bureaucrats who and a cover story for and defunded public schools. sought to control the weather the testing of silver Despite his lament that increasingly “Min the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. iodide cloud seeding, powerful philanthropy engenders civic Yet their decrees carried little weight in slated to be used in the inequality, Callahan pays inadequate the aerial realm: the atmosphere does not Vietnam War. Here, attention to philanthrocapitalism. This respond to state control. an interesting cast of model, which infuses business principles In Make It Rain, historian Kristine Harper characters from the into philanthropy (proffering handsome treats weather control as a political agent in 1960s appears, made investment returns), essentially justifies the hands of the American state. Politicians Make It Rain: up of big government wealth accumulation on the backs of at local, state and national levels issued edicts State Control of figures not typically ordinary people. He mentions various in pursuit of their political ends to bring the Atmosphere in included in histories structural enablers of gargantuan for- enhanced ‘sky water’ to their thirsty districts, Twentieth-Century of science: Bureau of tunes, from tax shelters to weak securities or to mobilize the clouds for diplomatic or America Reclamation director KRISTINE C. HARPER laws and corporate pressure to cut taxes military ends; “entrepreneurial scientists” University of Chicago Floyd Dominy, US and shrink regulation. Yet he retreats to took their money and produced technical Press: 2017. ambassador to India mild critique, calling for a “balancing reports. But in the long run, the weather did Chester Bowles, secre- act” of middling reforms around phil- what the weather does. tary of state Dean Rusk, agriculture secretary anthropic accountability, transparency, In an overextended metaphor belying the Orville Freeman, national-security adviser partnerships and political lobbying. complexity of her narrative, Harper asks Walt Rostow and CIA director Allen Dulles. If philanthropy indeed poses a grave us to imagine the state as “a shadowy male Yet Harper includes no parallel analysis threat to egalitarian values, Callahan’s figure” lurking at the edges of technical and of earlier bureaucrats and no mention of prescription may amount to tinkering at environmental histories: “Do we invite him president Richard Nixon’s continuation of the margins. Why should self-anointed in, take his money, let him ‘meet the parents’, weather-modification programmes over philanthropic elites, who already exercise acknowledge that he is calling the shots, and Vietnam. She provides a helpful list of inordinate power, have carte blanche to then continue checking in with him to make weather-control bills passed by Congress in steer public policy? As former US labour sure he hasn’t trotted off with a more attractive the period 1947–53, and a list of weather- secretary Robert Reich has noted, gov- partner…?” Her work is informed by politi- control research projects conducted in more ernments once collected billions from cal scientist James C. Scott’s Seeing like a State than a dozen countries in the 1950s — but tycoons, then democratically redistrib- (Yale Univ. Press, 1998), which criticizes the these lack detailed analysis. uted these revenues. Many would argue administrative ordering of nature and society Harper indicates, in several places, that that it is high time to rein in the mega- by the state. It also echoes sociologist Theda weather control is actually possible. Most billionaires, whether they are wielding Skocpol’s admonishment to “bring the state meteorologists would disagree. She cites the influence from the boardroom, the White back in” — in the book of the same name, “earliest success” as occurring in 1921, “when House or philanthropic perches. ■ co-edited with Peter B. Evans and Dietrich an airplane dispersing [electrically] charged Rueschemeyer (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985) sand into clouds triggered a snow flurry”. Anne-Emanuelle Birn is professor of — when describing efforts to control nature. This was an Army Air Corps-sponsored critical development studies and social The strongest sections of Make It Rain project in Dayton, Ohio, that produced no and behavioural health sciences at the include an account of GROMET, the code reliable scientific results. Later, she writes University of Toronto in Canada. Her name for a secret agricultural rainmaking that “as a result” of silver iodide seeding in latest book is Oxford University Press’s project run by the United States in India 1961, Hurricane Esther’s barometric pressure Textbook of Global Health. during the administration of US presi- “stopped deepening and maintained a relative e-mail: [email protected] dent Lyndon Johnson, in 1967. GROMET constant pressure thereafter”. She also cites

From Dust to Life The Eternal Darkness John Chambers & Jacqueline Mitton (Princeton Robert D. Ballard & Will Hively (Princeton Univ. Univ. Press, 2017) Press, 2017) In this grand chronicle of the science behind the Globally, just 1% of the sea floor has been origins of our 4.6-billion-year-old Solar System, explored in detail. Robert Ballard and Will Hively’s John Chambers and Jacqueline Mitton peruse exploration of that unforgiving environment everything from the giant collision thought to have reveals how divers reach it, and uncovers amazing formed our Moon to the nature of meteorites. beasts, such as blind white crabs and giant clams.

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by chemist William Ramsay.) The Bergeron– Findeisen ice-crystal process — a theoretical explanation of the growth of precipitation particles made of both ice and liquid water — is active in clouds in many seasons and latitudes, producing rain in mid-latitude sum- mer and tropical convective systems, not, as Harper indicates, only in mid-latitude winter. Harper’s exclusive focus on state-run projects unfortunately prevents examina- tion of the plethora of private rainmaking efforts in the United States and elsewhere during the twentieth century. And the book’s US‑centrism means no mention of the successful British fog-clearing project FIDO during the Second World War. In my book Fixing the Sky (Columbia University Press, 2010; cited in Harper’s first footnote), I covered rainmaking by concus- sion, electrified sand, chemical agents, dry 143mm X 174mm ice and silver iodide; weather warfare; and climate engineering. Many of my protago- nists (and even some of the cartoons) are the same: Dyrenforth, James Espy, Wilder Bancroft, Tor Bergeron, Henry Houghton, Vladimir Zworykin, John von Neumann, Langmuir, Vincent Schaefer, Bernard Vonnegut and Edward Teller. The two books are best read in parallel. Near the end of Make It Rain, Harper lists the current challenges of climate change, wondering whether rainmaking will make a comeback to alleviate water shortages. But her claims that all weather-control efforts are local and pertaining to water prevent her from any meaningful follow-up on technological fixes for climate warming, such as carbon dioxide removal or albedo modification. The state can indeed influence, and in many ways control, water resources. The “qualitative data” reported by military pilots Council study Critical Issues in Weather hydrological and hydroelectric regimes and observers that clouds seeded over Viet- Modification Research (National Academies controlled by the great Hoover Dam, for nam “grew six to ten times taller and wider Press, 2003) warned that “weather modifica- example, far exceed in capacity and reliabil- within ten minutes of seeding and doubled tion has largely been relegated to the realm of ity the puny results produced by any politi- the precipitation of unseeded clouds”. None promises unfulfilled”. It noted, too, that fur- cian who commanded rain to fall from the of these observations is verifiable, in my view. ther research may reveal that the “intentional sky. It is important, however, that historians Intervention is not control. In 1946, modification of a weather system is neither of science begin to bring the state back into Kathleen Burr Blodgett, a physicist at the currently possible nor desirable”. their stories, and this book is a start. ■ General Electric Corporation, advised chem- Harper’s book contains some errors. For ist and weather-modification enthusiast instance, US government agent Robert Jim Fleming is the Charles A. Dana Professor Irving Langmuir that altering a cloud was a far Dyrenforth, who in 1892 sent explosives and of Science, Technology, and Society at Colby cry from controlling its subsequent motion, balloons into the air to produce rain, used College in Maine. His latest book is Inventing growth or characteristics of precipitation. a hydrogen–oxygen mixture, not helium. Atmospheric Science (MIT Press, 2016). This is still true. The US National Research (Helium was isolated on Earth only in 1895, e-mail: [email protected]

One in a Billion The Age of Genomes Mark Johnson & Kathleen Gallagher (Simon & Steven Monroe Lipkin & Jon Luoma (Beacon, 2017) Schuster, 2017) In his insightful tour of clinical genetics, Steven Journalists Mark Johnson and Kathleen Gallagher Lipkin shares the stories of his patients — some tell the story of Nic Volker, a boy with a baffling of whom have rare conditions. With science inflammatory condition. Volker’s life was saved writer Jon Luoma, he also delves into the field’s when scientists harnessed DNA sequencing to limitations, including the manipulation of DNA in identify the genetic mutation responsible. high-profile murder cases.

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PHYSICS Revelations of fundamental science Robert P. Crease wonders at a physics history with more than a hint of the biblical.

orget the Odyssey, the Aeneid and particle accelerators to Gothic cathedrals. the Bible — the story of modern He says his story “contains every bit as much fundamental physics, Lawrence Krauss drama, human tragedy, and exaltation” as the Fargues, is greater than all of these. What Aeneid, and is motivated, like that work, to could live up to such a billing? parse humanity’s origins and nature. These The tale has been told before, in outline and are sloppy analogies. Although we’ve achieved detail. Krauss’s retelling is fast (four centuries ‘Revelation’, for instance, Krauss says that in 300 pages) and aimed at nonscientists. Its what we now know may be almost “ephem- best parts are its explanations of difficult con- eral” because future experimental results cepts. Its worst are where Krauss, a theoretical may change everything. The reader may be physicist, apparently feels competitive with reminded less of the Aeneid than of the myth the Bible and the humanities. of Sisyphus, whose story never ends. With considerable chutzpah, Krauss breaks In Krauss’s oversimplified take, there are his book into ‘Genesis’, ‘Exodus’ and ‘Revela- two answers to the question, ‘why are we tion’. ‘Genesis’ opens with Isaac Newton, who here?’. The biblical one is to say that humans used geometry and calculus to understand have a special status and that the Universe was nature. By the end of the nineteenth cen- Murray Gell-Mann made just for us. The other is to realize that tury, the tribe of scientists — now including and Yoichiro Nambu, the laws of nature are independent of us and Thomas Young, Michael Faraday and James led further discover- that we are “the result of an accident in the Clerk Maxwell — had gained key tools with ies: Yang–Mills theory, history of the universe”. He opts for the latter. the discovery of light interference, fields and parity violation, Bose– And in his invocations of the cave electromagnetic waves. Einstein condensates, analogy, he omits two key features. One is Krauss’s accounts of early scientific strug- quarks and the Higgs that, for Plato, the forms outside the cave are gles are certainly easy to follow. “The Church particle. unchanging, like laws of logic that cannot be was the National Science Foundation of the ‘Revelation’ comes disproved and are at work in all human activ- fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centu- with the develop- The Greatest Story ity, including science. Science is therefore an ries,” he remarks. Of Faraday’s discovery that ment in the 1970s of Ever Told … So Far inner-cave activity, and those who claim it magnets produce electricity, he writes: “Voilà, the standard model of LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS uncovers ultimate reality are priest-like pre- Simon & Schuster: Niagara Falls, hydroelectricity, and the mod- particle physics, which 2017. tenders. Second, the Republic is not about ern world!” Twentieth-century developments describes all known matter, but about justice and the Good. The are more difficult, but Krauss provides catchy particles and three of the four known forces. central cave image helps to show what moti- anecdotes. He explains relativity by referring Krauss dubs it “perhaps the greatest theo- vates the person who sees the forms to return to a time when he was struck by his child’s retical edifice yet created by human minds”. to the cave and try to reorganize communal projectile vomit in the car, and the different He calls what came next the attaining of the life, despite its difficulties. Krauss’s protago- trajectories the vomit took as perceived by “Promised Land” (mixing the biblical struc- nists seek only the structure of matter, and himself and someone outside the vehicle. ture). Krauss also likens the discovery of the their moral message to the cave-dwellers is: ‘Genesis’ ends in the mid-1930s, with the model to the allegory of the cave in Plato’s “We’re accidents!” discovery of the neutrino and short-range Republic, in which humans are captivated Krauss clearly thinks that his story deserves weak force. It is silly for Krauss to analo- by shadows and illusions, but philosophers to displace the classics of the humanities. His gize this period to the part of the Bible in can become aware of the ‘forms’ underlying book reveals why it can’t. ■ which the Jews are enslaved in Egypt, but existence. For Krauss, it is scientists who go that’s the flavour of this book. Many physi- “outside our cave of shadows to glimpse the Robert P. Crease is a professor in the cists see the 1950s to 1970s as a golden age, otherwise hidden reality beneath the surface”. philosophy department at Stony Brook with soaring budgets and huge machines Krauss clearly covets the cachet of the University, New York, and co-editor-in-chief unearthing hordes of particles. Their pres- humanities. He likens Albert Einstein’s crea- of Physics in Perspective. tige was at a peak. New heroes, including tivity to Vincent van Gogh’s, and compares e-mail: [email protected]

Unravelling Starlight Black Hole Blues Barbara J. Becker (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2017) Janna Levin (Alfred Knopf, 2017) In this exhaustive biography, Barbara Becker Astrophysicist Janna Levin records the long, celebrates British astronomers William and arduous journey of the scientists building the Margaret Huggins. William contributed to the nascent field of gravitational waves, from the origins of astrophysics as the first to use a enthusiasm of its founders to first detection five spectroscope to detect stellar motion in the line decades later (see Sheila Rowan’s review: Nature of sight; Margaret pioneered astrophotography. 532, 28–29; 2016). Rosalind Metcalfe