Combining careful reporting with vivid narration, science writer Rebecca Skloot describes how cancerous cells growing in the cervix of a poor black tobacco farmer named Henrietta Lacks changed the face of modern medical science. In the book, Skloot expertly explains the science behind the cells and their significance, but more importantly, she makes it clear that the story is not just about the cells’ utility to scientists. It’s the story of the unknown woman behind the famous cells. A dime-sized sample of Lacks’ cells, sliced away in 1951 without permission, quickly became an ... (p. 30)

Watch out world — here comes American culture waving a manual of psychiatric diagnoses. Soon, everyone from Hong Kong schoolgirls to Sri Lankan villagers will think about mental health and illness in the same homogenized way. In Crazy Like Us, journalist Ethan Watters makes a case that this monolithic scenario could happen, a disturbing specter for psychiatrists who study how people in different parts of the world define and treat problems classified as mental disorders in the West. Watters explores several disturbing instances of Western mental health ideas gone awry in non-Western nat... (p. 30)

A psychiatrist criticizes the idea of psychiatric disease as a product of biological and social factors. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2010, 253 p., $50. (p. 30)

A biologist explores useful compounds made by plants and microbes. Oxford Univ. Press, 2010, 250 p., $65. (p. 30)

An aging society has spurred academics and entrepreneurs to study getting old and what could or should be done to stop it. Harmony Books, 2010, 234 p., $26. (p. 30)

Studying players in the computer game World of Warcraft can explain real-world group behavior, a sociologist argues. MIT Press, 2010, 244 p., $27.95. (p. 30)

Two mathematicians add new analyses and context to Abbott’s classic story about a two-dimensional universe. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010, 294 p., $14.99. (p. 30)

There’s an old saying among meteorologists: Climate is what you should expect, weather is what you’ll actually get. With explanations a little more complicated than that, The Encyclopedia of Weather and Climate Change provides enough detail for weather buffs of all ages. Besides being lavishly illustrated with more than 2,000 color photos, maps, diagrams and other images, this hefty volume — organized into six topical sections, each written or vetted by a different expert — thoroughly explores Earth’s weather and climate. The authors tackle questions such as how meteorologists mon... (p. 31)

How athletes, Olympian and otherwise, perform some of their most amazing physical feats. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2010, 214 p., $25. (p. 31)

A fascination with animals is an intrinsic part of human nature, an anthropologist argues. Doubleday, 2010, 258 p., $24.99. (p. 31)

A crowd watches passively as a man brutally beats a woman on a Detroit bridge. An investor selects a company solely on the basis of an easy-to-read ticker symbol. A worker in a burning building wastes precious seconds asking others whether to evacuate. The decisions these real-life people made may sound cruel or stupid, but to be fair, Vedantam says, they weren’t thinking consciously. They were thinking with their hidden brains. “The hidden brain” is a shorthand term that Vedantam, a science journalist for The Washington Post, has coined to help readers grasp what is by definition ob... (p. 30)

The “me” in the title of Epstein’s book refers not only to the baby, but also to any mother who might want out of the medical way of giving birth prevalent in Western culture today. After saying that the book’s guidance “should pique your curiosity to think about the medical maze in a different sort of way,” Epstein describes childbirth from the 1600s to the present, ultimately tackling how modern medicine influences the way women conceive and give birth. Epstein, a medical journalist who is also trained as a physician, offers revealing and sometimes disturbing insight int... (p. 30)

A science historian analyzes Newton’s philosophy of mathematics. MIT Press, 2009, 422 p., $55. (p. 30)

The country with the highest percentage of preserved land in the world has many birding opportunities, described here by location. Cornell University Press, 2009, 365 p., $29.95. (p. 30)

Complex systems often stem from an accumulation of simple patterns. Basic Books, 2009, 260 p., $22.95. (p. 30)