Reviews
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New England Wild Flower Society’s Flora Novae Angliae: A Manual for the Identification of Native and Naturalized Higher Vascular Plants of New England by Arthur Haines
The New England Wild Flower Society provides a comprehensive guide to the identification of the region’s native plants. Yale Univ., 2011, 973 p., $85
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Reactions: The Private Life of Atoms by Peter Atkins
An overview of college-level chemistry simplifies matters by imagining chemical reactions from the point of view of atoms. Oxford Univ., 2011, 200 p., $24.95
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The Chemical History of a Candle by Michael Faraday
The physicist’s classic lecture is reprinted with an introduction by Faraday expert Frank James as a 150th anniversary edition. Oxford Univ., 2011, 192 p., $24.95
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Culinary Reactions: The Everyday Chemistry of Cooking by Simon Quellen Field
This clear primer to the chemistry of cooking goes well beyond the basics to teach cooks how to improve their results scientifically. Chicago Review Press, 2012, 238 p., $16.95
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A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest by William DeBuys
A look at how global warming could affect the American Southwest reveals a landscape in peril. Oxford Univ., 2011, 369 p., $27.95
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Memory: Fragments of a Modern History by Alison Winter
With examples from police interrogators to hypnotized housewives, a historian describes changing views of memory — what it is, how it’s formed and what it means. Univ. of Chicago, 2012, 310 p., $30
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Auroras by Dan Bortolotti
Striking images illuminate this exploration of one of nature’s greatest light shows. Firefly, 2011, 143 p., $29.95
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You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You’re Deluding Yourself by David McRaney
Forty-six of the brain’s everyday fallacies and cognitive biases are highlighted in an expansion of the author’s blog about the neuroscience of self-delusion. Gotham Books, 2011, 300 p., $22.50
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Mushroom by Nicholas P. Money
Mushroom lore and history mingle with science and medicine in a biologist’s exploration of the fungal kingdom. Oxford, 2011, 201 p., $24.95
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Part Wild: One Woman’s Journey with a Creature Caught Between the Worlds of Wolves and Dogs by Ceiridwen Terrill
The cultural history and genetic story of dog domestication is told through the adventures of a wolf-husky hybrid adopted by a science writer. Simon & Schuster, 2011, 274 p., $25
