Book Reviews December 2005

The hundred greatest stars James B Kaler Copernicus Books, 2002 ISBN: 0387954368 Mentioned in Full Review In this original way of looking at the variety of stars and star systems, James Kaler picks out 100 stars and writes about the special characteristics of each one. Each star has a double page to itself with an illustration and summary of its vital statistics on one side, and a self-contained essay about it on the other. Apart from the Sun which, because of its special place in our affections, appears in a place of honour as star zero, the remainder are dealt with in alphabetical order - maybe a bizarre ordering, but it does emphasise the sheer variety of stars and star systems. Continued..

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Bard on the Brain Paul Matthews University of Chicago press, 2003 ISBN: 0972383026 Mentioned in Full Review We can study the working of the human mind in two different ways. The first is to look at how people behave in different circumstances. This has been going on ever since the beginning of humanity, and is epitomised by the works of Shakespeare, clearly a keen observer of human behaviour. However, now there is a second way, made possible by advances in technology, which is to examine directly what is going on in the human brain. This book attempts to provide a link between the two ways of looking at the mind. Each section starts with a passage from the works of Shakespeare, and goes on to look at how it can be related to a recent research in neuroscience. Continued..

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