The Aspiring Polymath's Society discussion

Hiya fellow polymaths. I'm an avid reader of new popular science books, and write executive summaries of them that you may be interested in (basically, you get the entire book in 15 pages or less). Some of the latest books that I've covered include Dan Ariely's 'The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone--Especially Ourselves', Peter Diamandis' 'Abundance: The Future Is Better than You Think', Paul Krugman's 'End This Depression Now!' and Lawrence Krauss' 'A Universe from Nothing: Why there Is Something Rather than Nothing'. I'm at newbooksinbrief.wordpress.com. I look forward to contributing to the group.

Cheers,
Aaron

Just finished reading 'The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code.' It was fantastic. It's by Sam Kean (author of the equally spectacular 'The Disappearing Spoon'). His latest book tells the story of DNA--both the story of the history of life (from the smallest, simplest microbe, to we human beings), as well as the story of how we human beings managed to unravel DNA's mysteries (from Mendel, to Morgan, to Watson and Crick, to the Human Genome Project). I've written a full executive summary available at newbooksinbrief.wordpress.com.

Cheers,
Aaron

Just finished reading David K. Randall's new book called 'Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep'. It was superb. The book takes a look at the science behind pretty well every facet of sleep you can think of from sleep deprivation, to natural sleep patterns (and how it changes over the course of a lifetime), to putting your kids to bed, to dreaming, to sleepwalking (and the bizarre phenomenon of committing crime while sleepwalking), to insomnia, to just plain getting a better night's sleep. Fascinating stuff. I've written an executive summary of the book available at newbooksinbrief.wordpress.com

Cheers,
Aaron

Awesome! I'm going to check out your blog for sure.

Just finished reading Jim Baggott's new book called 'Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the 'God Particle''. The book discusses the recent discovery of the Higgs boson, of course, but it also does an excellent job of explaining the development of the Standard Model of particle physics (which theory is our best explanation of matter and force, and the theory of which the Higgs boson is a part). The book provides just what the general reader needs to understand the discovery of the Higgs boson and what it all means. I've written an executive summary of the book available at newbooksinbrief.wordpress.com.

Cheers,
Aaron