One of the perks of this corporate blogging gig is that it’s put me on the radar of book publishers, who have started sending me free stuff. We like free stuff, here at Chateau Steelypips, and we like books, so that’s a Good Thing.
It’s becoming almost too much of a Good Thing, though– In the past week or so, I’ve received:
- Not Even Wrong by Peter Woit (thank you, Peter), which I finished last night (review forthcoming).
- The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney, in the spiffy new paperback edition.
- The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock (thrown in with tRWoS by the publisher).
- The Trouble With Physics by Lee Smolin.
That’s more science books showing up in one week than I usually read in a year… I also feel like I ought to go read some pro-string-theory book (recommendations for anything other than Susskind’s Landscape thing are welcome in the comments), just to maintain a little balance…
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, feel free to send me some!
I agree with #1. Let your readers review them for you.
I’ve read two of them, the Smolin and the Mooney. Both good. Looking at your other recent entries, I don’t know if you will like the Smolin book since he discusses the problems in Academia relating to physics, but really in general, including arrogant faculty. His biggest point is that we have made no changes to our basic physical models in the last 25 years, and that is unprecedented in a couple of centuries. I don’t know if I believe it since new theories of superconductivity and such happened in the last years I believe, but since i read Lederman’s “God Particle from 1992 not long ago, its does seem like we are paying for the lack of the SSC with 20 years of delay. No matter how he is complementary to String Theory he does ask about the elephant in the circus tent(as Garrison Keillor would put it), that is, when are the ST folks going to bring it out?