Secular Sermons: Essays on Science and Philosophy Alan Musgrave Otago University Press, $45.00, ISBN 9781877372704 Publishers in New Zealand produce books in many areas such as literature, history, politics, biography, art; they produce almost nothing in philosophy. Philosophers in this…
Poles Apart: Beyond the Shouting, Who’s Right About Climate Change Gareth Morgan and John McCrystal Random House, $39.99, ISBN 9781869790455 When I learnt that Gareth Morgan was writing a book on climate change I groaned. Out of politeness, it was…
The Awa Book of New Zealand Science Rebecca Priestley (ed) Awa Press, $48.00, ISBN 9780958262996 I grew up in a household with a chemistry professor for a mother, a kitchen full of mysterious jars labelled “Experiment: Do Not Eat”, and…
Falling for Science: Asking the Big Questions Bernard Beckett Longacre Press, $39.99, ISBN 9781877361722 Imagine yourself in Egypt in the third century BC. You believe the earth is round – what else would cause ships’ masts to appear before…
The Transit of Venus Marilyn Head (ed) Awa Press, $24.99, ISBN 978095826972 A few years back, I had to review a self-published New Zealand novel. It was seriously rotten, and I wrote that it “tried to be bad, bold and…
Standing Upright Here: New Zealand in the Nuclear Age 1945-1990 Malcolm Templeton Victoria University Press, $49.95, ISBN 0864735405 First impressions suggest this is the kind of worthy and dense book few people will get around to reading. That would be…
The Elegant Universe of Albert Einstein: The Collected Lectures of the Royal Society of New Zealand E=mc2 Series Broadcast on National Radio Awa Press, $24.99, ISBN 0958262926 Are Angels OK? The Parallel Universes of New Zealand Writers and Scientists Paul…
Bright Star: Beatrice Hill Tinsley Astronomer Christine Cole Catley Cape Catley, $49.99, ISBN 1877340014 I can offer the usual apologia for astronomy. There’s its significance as a global employer (NASA alone pays 20,000 salaries). Its contributions to other sciences, such…
Nuclear New Zealand: Sorting Fact from Fiction Andrew McEwan Hazard, $39.99, ISBN 187727058X In July 2002, on the 36th anniversary of the first French nuclear tests on the Mururoa Atoll, John Doom of Papeete’s Association Mururoa e Tatou announced that an…