It’s nuclear physics 101: Radioactivity proceeds at its own pace. Each type of radioactive isotope, be it plutonium-238 or carbon-14, changes into another isotope or element at a specific, universal, immutable rate. This much has been known for more than a century, since Ernest Rutherford defined the notion of half-life—the time it takes for half of the atoms in a radioactive sample to transmute into something else. So when researchers suggested in August that the sun causes variations in the decay rates of isotopes of silicon, chlorine, radium and manganese, the physics community reacted ... (p. 20)

Preston’s style of journalism, he says, is the equivalent of climbing into a boiling pot to better understand soup. In this collection, Preston describes some of his close encounters with the subjects he has written about, telling, for example, how he donned a “spacesuit” to visit a high-security U.S. Army lab where researchers study Ebola virus (the subject of Preston’s celebrated thriller The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story). He goes on to describe how he climbed the tallest tree east of the Mississippi River, right after it had been killed by an invasive species — ...

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...