Make an egg stand on end, suspend a Ping-Pong ball with a hair dryer and do other fun science demos at home. Skyhorse Publishing, 2008, 321 p., $19.95.

Last summer, the Discovery Channel temporarily suspended airing its hit survivalist show Man vs. Wild. The producer admitted that the protagonist would get help from staff or spend nights in hotels — all along claiming to rough it alone in the world’s most inhospitable places. Yet, Man vs. Wild was not the first high-profile case of possible “frontier fakery.” In August 1913, Joseph Knowles, a former Boston Post illustrator, one-time trapper, hunting guide and Navy man, went into the Maine woods on a solitary retreat. Starting out with nothing, not even clothes, Knowles thrived for tw...

In mid-20th century America, two scientists towered over all others in the public mind: Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer was the man who built the atomic bomb; Einstein’s theories explained how such a vast release of energy was possible. Both were acclaimed as geniuses of the highest order. Yet they were dissimilar in numerous respects. Einstein was solitary, kind, self-assured and even stubborn; Oppenheimer was gregarious, witty, sometimes sarcastic and cruel, and at some level deeply insecure. Historian Silvan S. Schweber exploits these contrasts to explore the meaning ...

An opening image of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” will have you flipping quickly to “Turning Around by 2020.” Univ. of Chicago Press, 2008, 337 p., $22.50.

A guided tour of our pre-history and how we understand it. Texas A&M Univ. Press, 2008, 216 p., $29.95.

The alien minds are of animals. The question: Can robots mimic them? Oxford Univ. Press, 2008, 252 p., $34.95.

For young readers, the story of a koala who survived a brush fire. Charlesbridge, 2008, 16 p., $15.95.

An argument that simple policies will not save complex forests. Rutgers Univ. Press, 2008, 280 p., $26.95 (paperback).

Chock-full of unicorn horns (narwhal teeth), griffin claws (antelope antlers), leopard skins, petrified wood or other gems hand-picked from nature, “cabinets of curiosities” have developed a modern-day reputation as whimsical caboodles of miscellaneous oddities. This book will overturn that impression. A proper collection was “a model of universal nature, made private,” as Francis Bacon, the 17th century philosopher and statesman, is quoted as saying. In providing a grand tour of Western European collections, Arthur MacGregor shows that “purposeful collecting” embodied n...

When science writer Carl Zimmer looks into a petri dish teeming with E. coli, he sees himself, humanity and all life. In Microcosm, Zimmer traces the lessons biologists have learned from the microbe, which calls our guts its home. He also uses it to discuss some of the most fundamental questions in biology: What is life? How does it persist? Why must it end? “I look at life through a lens made of E. coli,” Zimmer writes, and many biologists are doing the same. E. coli was the species scientists first used to decipher the genetic code, and later to understand how genes switch on...

Primatologists follow the social lives of these big-brained Costa Rican monkeys. Harvard Univ. Press, 2008 358 p. $45

Learn to use simple arithmetic to approximate anything. Princeton Univ. Press, 2008, 300 p. $19.95

The book promises a personal history of Isaac Newton. Ackroyd also wrote Shakespeare: The Biography and London: The Biography. Nan A. Talese, 2008 176 p. $21.95

In this picture book, a child uses sight and touch to identify seven common trees, even after they've lost their leaves. Charlesbridge Publishing, 2008, 30 p. $15.95

What you don’t know about the brain could fill a book. That’s true even if you happen to be a brain surgeon or neuroscientist. Luckily, Zeman, a British neurologist, has painted A Portrait of the Brain in lucid, conversational prose. Zeman steps us through the brain’s inner workings, starting with the most fundamental element — the atom — and, by chapter, guiding us from there to the gene, to the protein, to the organelle, to the neuron … to the psyche and then even to the anatomy of the soul. Case studies drawn from Zeman’s practice illustrate exactly what happens to a perso...