Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Random and Clever

How To by Randall Munroe

by Leave a Comment

Best for: People who like science and humor. In a nutshell: Author Munroe takes on everyday problems like ‘How to Move’ with increasingly absurd advice like ‘get a bunch of helicopters to do that’, and then explains the science behind it. Worth quoting: When discussing using trained birds of prey to knock drones out of the sky: “…but any plan that calls for countering rogue machines by training animals to hurl themselves at them is probably a bad one. We wouldn’t enforce speed limits by […]

This is (almost) the end

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

by Leave a Comment

Mary Roach’s Stiff is a paean to dead bodies. She notes in the introduction that “Cadavers are our superheroes: They brave fire without flinching, withstand falls from head-on car crashes into walls. You can fire a gun at them or run a speedboat over their legs, and it will not faze them. Their heads can be removed with no deleterious effect. They can be in six places at once. . . .  What a shame to waste these powers, to not use them for the […]

Red Rover Red Rover roll right over Mars

Red Rover: Curiosity on Mars by Richard Ho

by Leave a Comment

Red Rover: Curiosity on Mars by Richard Ho, is one of those books that is cool. Yet I still feel lackluster about it. There was something missing. Katherine Roy’s illustrations are a combination of realistic and a hint of whimsy. The text itself, however, has a more artistic then “serious” scientific element, but still has all the information needed. As we explore the planet of Mars, we learn about the planet and the machines that came before Curiosity. This information will grab the space nut but […]

A wonderful surprise-an intelligent, articulate science graphic novel

The Dialogues by Clifford V. Johnson

by Leave a Comment

I attend a science fiction/fantasy convention every year and during one of the panels on the Physics of the Avengers this past year, the speaker recommended this graphic novel, which was written by a friend of his. Hard science explanations in a graphic novel format intrigued me, but I was unsure if it would actually work over the entire work. While it drags in some places, I really enjoyed this graphic novel. There isn’t a coherent story, but rather the author chooses to use the […]

“I see poisoners—so calculating, so cold-blooded—as most like the villains of our horror stories.” (CBR11 Bingo)

The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum

by Leave a Comment

I don’t know what it says about me that I quite enjoy medical history and historic New York, but I do know that it says that The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York is right up my alley. It also wins the prize for longest title of the books I’ve read this year. Blum’s book tracks the time when a pair of forensic scientists, Charles Norris and Alexander Getler began the chemical detective work that forensic science […]

A Love Letter to Our Little Lords and Masters.

First in Fly: Drosophila Research and Biological Discovery by Stephanie Elizabeth Mohr

by Leave a Comment

I think Stephanie Elizabeth Mohr has done us all a great service by writing this book. As a drosophilist myself (or in more common parlance, a fly-pusher) I understand completely why Drosophila is such a great model organism to work for genetics. It’s a damned shame though that this understanding has not really trickled down to the rest of the population, who just don’t get it the way we do. Mention that you’re being paid by the government to study flies, and people look at […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo