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WT Sharpe · 07-01-2014, 12:50 AM

July 2014 MobileRead Book Club Vote

Help us choose a book as the July 2014 eBook for the MobileRead Book Club. The poll will be open for 5 days. There will be no runoff vote unless the voting results a tie, in which case there will be a 3 day run-off poll. This is a visible poll: others can see how you voted. It is

You may cast a vote for each book that appeals to you.

We will start the discussion thread for this book on July 20th. Select from the following Official Choices with three nominations each:

• Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin
Amazon Au / Amazon Ca / Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Google Play

Spoiler:

Amazon.com Review
Oliver Sacks on Your Inner Fish:
(Since the 1970 publication of Migraine, neurologist Oliver Sacks's unusual and fascinating case histories of "differently brained" people and phenomena—a surgeon with Tourette's syndrome, a community of people born totally colorblind, musical hallucinations, to name a few--have been marked by extraordinary compassion and humanity, focusing on the patient as much as the condition. His books include The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Awakenings (which inspired the Oscar-nominated film), and 2007's Musicophilia. He lives in New York City, where he is Professor of Clinical Neurology at Columbia University.)

Your Inner Fish is my favorite sort of book—an intelligent, exhilarating, and compelling scientific adventure story, one which will change forever how you understand what it means to be human.

The field of evolutionary biology is just beginning an exciting new age of discovery, and Neil Shubin's research expeditions around the world have redefined the way we now look at the origins of mammals, frogs, crocodiles, tetrapods, and sarcopterygian fish—and thus the way we look at the descent of humankind. One of Shubin's groundbreaking discoveries, only a year and a half ago, was the unearthing of a fish with elbows and a neck, a long-sought evolutionary "missing link" between creatures of the sea and land-dwellers.

My own mother was a surgeon and a comparative anatomist, and she drummed it into me, and into all of her students, that our own anatomy is unintelligible without a knowledge of its evolutionary origins and precursors. The human body becomes infinitely fascinating with such knowledge, which Shubin provides here with grace and clarity. Your Inner Fish shows us how, like the fish with elbows, we carry the whole history of evolution within our own bodies, and how the human genome links us with the rest of life on earth.

Shubin is not only a distinguished scientist, but a wonderfully lucid and elegant writer; he is an irrepressibly enthusiastic teacher whose humor and intelligence and spellbinding narrative make this book an absolute delight. Your Inner Fish is not only a great read; it marks the debut of a science writer of the first rank.

• Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age by Modris Eksteins
Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Google Play / Kobo

Spoiler:

• Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach
Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Google Play (ePub) / Kobo

Spoiler:

• The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter
Amazon US / Barnes & Noble

Spoiler:

• The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2013 edited by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Amazon Ca / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Kobo / OverDrive

Spoiler:

• The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein & Neil Asher Silberman
Amazon Au / Amazon Ca / Amazon UK / Amazon US

Spoiler:

07-01-2014, 12:50 AM	#1
WT Sharpe Bah, humbug! Posts: 39,072 Karma: 157049943 Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Chesapeake, VA, USA Device: Kindle Oasis, iPad Pro, & a Samsung Galaxy S9.	July 2014 Book Club Vote July 2014 MobileRead Book Club Vote Help us choose a book as the July 2014 eBook for the MobileRead Book Club. The poll will be open for 5 days. There will be no runoff vote unless the voting results a tie, in which case there will be a 3 day run-off poll. This is a visible poll: others can see how you voted. It is You may cast a vote for each book that appeals to you. We will start the discussion thread for this book on July 20th. Select from the following Official Choices with three nominations each: • Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin Amazon Au / Amazon Ca / Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Google Play Spoiler: Amazon.com Review Oliver Sacks on Your Inner Fish: (Since the 1970 publication of Migraine, neurologist Oliver Sacks's unusual and fascinating case histories of "differently brained" people and phenomena—a surgeon with Tourette's syndrome, a community of people born totally colorblind, musical hallucinations, to name a few--have been marked by extraordinary compassion and humanity, focusing on the patient as much as the condition. His books include The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Awakenings (which inspired the Oscar-nominated film), and 2007's Musicophilia. He lives in New York City, where he is Professor of Clinical Neurology at Columbia University.) Your Inner Fish is my favorite sort of book—an intelligent, exhilarating, and compelling scientific adventure story, one which will change forever how you understand what it means to be human. The field of evolutionary biology is just beginning an exciting new age of discovery, and Neil Shubin's research expeditions around the world have redefined the way we now look at the origins of mammals, frogs, crocodiles, tetrapods, and sarcopterygian fish—and thus the way we look at the descent of humankind. One of Shubin's groundbreaking discoveries, only a year and a half ago, was the unearthing of a fish with elbows and a neck, a long-sought evolutionary "missing link" between creatures of the sea and land-dwellers. My own mother was a surgeon and a comparative anatomist, and she drummed it into me, and into all of her students, that our own anatomy is unintelligible without a knowledge of its evolutionary origins and precursors. The human body becomes infinitely fascinating with such knowledge, which Shubin provides here with grace and clarity. Your Inner Fish shows us how, like the fish with elbows, we carry the whole history of evolution within our own bodies, and how the human genome links us with the rest of life on earth. Shubin is not only a distinguished scientist, but a wonderfully lucid and elegant writer; he is an irrepressibly enthusiastic teacher whose humor and intelligence and spellbinding narrative make this book an absolute delight. Your Inner Fish is not only a great read; it marks the debut of a science writer of the first rank. • Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age by Modris Eksteins Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Google Play / Kobo Spoiler: A rare and remarkable cultural history of World War I that unearths the roots of modernism Dazzling in its originality, Rites of Spring probes the origins, impact, and aftermath of World War I, from the premiere of Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring in 1913 to the death of Hitler in 1945. Recognizing that “The Great War was the psychological turning point . . . for modernism as a whole,” author Modris Eksteins examines the lives of ordinary people, works of modern literature, and pivotal historical events to redefine the way we look at our past and toward our future. • Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Google Play (ePub) / Kobo Spoiler: The alimentary canal—the much-maligned tube from mouth to rear—is as taboo, in its way, as the cadavers in Stiff, and as surreal as the universe of zero gravity explored in Packing for Mars. In Gulp we meet the scientists who tackle the questions no one else thinks—or has the courage—to ask. How much can you eat before your stomach bursts? Why doesn't the stomach digest itself? Can wine tasters really tell a $10 bottle from a $100 bottle? Why is crunchy food so appealing? Can constipation kill you? Did it kill Elvis? We go on location to a pet food taste-test lab, a fecal transplant, and into a live stomach to observe the fate of a meal. Why is crunchy food so appealing? Why is it so hard to find words for flavors and smells? Why doesn’t the stomach digest itself? How much can you eat before your stomach bursts? Can constipation kill you? Did it kill Elvis? In Gulp we meet scientists who tackle the questions no one else thinks of—or has the courage to ask. We go on location to a pet-food taste-test lab, a fecal transplant, and into a live stomach to observe the fate of a meal. With Roach at our side, we travel the world, meeting murderers and mad scientists, Eskimos and exorcists (who have occasionally administered holy water rectally), rabbis and terrorists—who, it turns out, for practical reasons do not conceal bombs in their digestive tracts. Like all of Roach's books, Gulp is as much about human beings as it is about human bodies. • The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter Amazon US / Barnes & Noble Spoiler: When baseball great Ty Cobb died in 1961, Ritter got the idea to interview the few remaining contemporaries of Cobb before they too all died. The result was a highly respected best seller, an oral history. "Almost perfect . . . a vivid, gentle, and humorous narrative, accompanied by marvelous photographs." - The New Yorker "Easily the best baseball book ever produced by anyone." -- -- Cleveland Plain Dealer "I could happily reread every summer for the rest of my life that greatest of all baseball books..." -- -- Stephen Jay Gould, The New York Times Book Review "Quite simply the best sports book in recent memory." -- -- Wilfrid Sheed, The New York Times Book Review "The single best baseball book of all time." -- -- Red Barber "There's not a dull moment in the whole book." -- The Raleigh (N.C.) News and Observer "The Glory of Their Times will be around as long as baseball." -- -- Nelson Algren • The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2013 edited by Siddhartha Mukherjee Amazon Ca / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Kobo / OverDrive Spoiler: Pulitzer Prize–winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee, a leading cancer physician and researcher, selects the year’s top science and nature writing from journalists who dive into their fields with curiosity and passion, delivering must-read articles from a wide array of fields. Some of the more intriguing sounding titles in this collection of essays include "On Tenderness", "Beyond the Quantum Horizon", "Is Space Digital?", "The Sweet Spot in Time", "Machines of the Infinite", "Altered States", "Super Humanity", "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?", "The Wisdom of Psychopaths", and much more. • The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein & Neil Asher Silberman Amazon Au / Amazon Ca / Amazon UK / Amazon US Spoiler: From Goodreads: The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts In this groundbreaking work that sets apart fact and legend, authors Finkelstein and Silberman use significant archeological discoveries to provide historical information about biblical Israel and its neighbors. In this iconoclastic and provocative work, leading scholars Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman draw on recent archaeological research to present a dramatically revised portrait of ancient Israel and its neighbors. They argue that crucial evidence (or a telling lack of evidence) at digs in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon suggests that many of the most famous stories in the Bible -- the wanderings of the patriarchs, the Exodus from Egypt, Joshua's conquest of Canaan, and David and Solomon's vast empire; -- reflect the world of the later authors rather than actual historical facts. Challenging the fundamentalist readings of the scriptures and marshaling the latest archaeological evidence to support its new vision of ancient Israel, The Bible Unearthed offers a fascinating and controversial perspective on when and why the Bible was written and why it possesses such great spiritual and emotional power today.