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 "The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." -- Mark Twain
"A book is like a garden carried in the pocket." - Chinese proverb
It's a pity that most of us spend all of our time on science and do not read anything to feed our brains. We now provide a forum for all colleagues and academics to introduce and exchange their thought on the good books that they have read. Any discipline is open for discussion, but we reserve the right to guard our web site against porn, politics and religion.
Anyone who loves to read will appreciate Thomas Jefferson's sentiment,"I cannot live without books." Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, and there could be no concept of humanity.
Forget about Jean-Jacoues Rousseau's saying, "I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about." Your contributions will help our web site be a source of reading and thinking. |
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FLOWERS: How They Changed the World by William C. Burger, Prometheus Books, 2006, 210p. ISBN: 1591024072
Flowering plants provide energy for other living things and are Earth's most significant biomass. This book recounts such impacts and describes the distinctive characteristics of flowers and their evolutionary histories. Burger analyzes the fundamental purpose of flowers and why plants spend so much energy on their blooms. The short answer to both questions is sex. Read more |
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| Seed to seed: The secret life of plants by Nicholas Harberd, Bloomsbury Publishers,2006, 320p, ISBN: 1582344132 |
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| Part field notebook, part sketchbook, part diary, Seed to Seed is a evocation of the beauty of the natural world and an exhilarating explanation of the secret workings of plants. Possessed of a perceptive eye and a fine turn of phrase, Nicholas Harberd has written a classic that will have you looking at thale cress (Arabidopsis) with all the amazement it deserves. he is able to describe both what is visible and the hidden molecular mechanisms that underlie the visible events in the plant's life. In the process, he reveals what the daily life of a scientist truly is. Read more |
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Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond, Penguin Press, 2005, 592p, ISBN: 0143036556
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is the follow-up to Diamond's Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel. While Guns, Germs, and Steel explained the geographic and environmental reasons why some human populations have flourished. Collapse uses the same factors to examine why ancient societies have fallen apart. Read more |
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The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tomplins and Christopher Bird, HarperCollins Pub; 1989, 416p, ISBN: 0060915870
Can plant read your mind? Can plant respond to approaching of your dog? Can plant accurately function as lie detector? Can plants react to random killing of brine shrimp? Plants react to deaths of cells? ... Plant reacts to showing slides at your lecture? Read more |
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Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared M. Diamond, W. W. Norton & Co, 1999, 480p, ISBN: 0393317552
David e-mailed us once that he failed to find his copy of a good book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. I hope he has found it by now. I am happy to know at least one of our academic "big wigs" still appreciates a good book these days. I should invite David to write his recommendation of this book and post it at here. Read more |
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Second Nature: A Gardener's Education by Michael Pollan, Grove Press, 2003, 320p, ISBN: 0802140114
This book isn't so much a "how-to" on gardening as it is a "how-to book" on thinking about gardening. It follows the course of the natural year, from spring through winter, as the author chronicles his growth as a gardener of a rocky valley in Connecticut.
Michael's book makes me look at my roses in a totally different way. You will like this book if you tend to think in pictures and love the art and hard work of gardening. Read more |
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The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2002, 320p, ISBN: 0747563004
In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship like honeybees and flowers. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires--sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control--with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind's most basic yearnings. And just as we've benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating whom? Read more |
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