Category: Kindle

The Serial Ebook: Margaret Atwood’s Positron

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Positron

I'm Starved For You (Positron), by Margaret Atwood.  Published by Byliner. $2.99. Available for Kindle, Nook, iPad, and others.

Reviewed by Veronique Greenwood

There’s something a little bit retro about the scorn heaped, in some quarters, on ebooks:
As Download the Universe overlord Carl Zimmer has noted, similar charges of cheapening the reading experience were once leveled against paperback books.

It’s fitting, then, that publishers of ebooks are continuing to rediscover the promises and perils of earlier publishing forms. Serialized novels are one of the latest experiments: In September, Amazon launched its Kindle Serials, and in August, Byliner, known primarily for long-form nonfiction, announced that it would be publishing several new novels, including Positron, by Margaret Atwood, in installments.

Continue reading “The Serial Ebook: Margaret Atwood’s Positron” →

Matter: A Look At A New Way To Read About Science

Posted on by Carl Zimmer

Do No HarmDo No Harm, by Anil Ananthaswamy. Published by Matter, $.99. Visit Matter for details about formats, purchasing, and membership.

Reviewed by Carl Zimmer

Talk about burying the lead.

Yesterday the Washington Post announced that they were hiring a new editor-in-chief. Reporting for the New York Times, Christine Haughney wrote that the Post made the switch because they were struggling with a steep decline in readership. It's not until deep in the piece that Haughney makes a startling statement:

"The paper also faces fresh competition from online news outlets, like Politico, whose founders include former Washington Post reporters."


Politico certainly didn't bring the Washington Post to its current moment of crisis singlehandedly. But it is striking to me that a web operation started from scratch in 2007 could baloon so fast that it could become a major threat to what was once one of the world's leading newspapers.

My attention was drawn to this buried lead because I've recently been getting to know a new player in the science news business, called Matter. This morning they are launching their web site, and their first piece of long-form journalism. It's way too early to predict whether Matter will become the Politico of the science world. But they definitely are entering the arena with impressive style.

Continue reading “Matter: A Look At A New Way To Read About Science” →

The Long Quest to Catch a Poisoner

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Kalinka 300The Kalinka Affair: A Father’s Hunt for His Daughter’s Killer, by Joshua Hammer,  published by The Atavist for Kindle, iPad, Nook, Google Play, and Kobo.

Reviewed by Deborah Blum

Call it an identity crisis of sorts. But for a career
science writer, I’ve found myself spending an unusual amount of time in the
past few years writing – and devotedly reading – true crime stories.

Call it also a logical consequence. I wrote a book about
poison, murder and the early days of forensic toxicology. I write a blog about
culture and chemistry, one that leads me inevitably into stories of lethal
cocktails and homicidal intent. When I see a tale of murder and mystery, I
usually wonder if there was a toxic weapon involved.

I realize that telling you this may make me sound a little
creepy and it’s not – promise – that I spend my days lurking around hoping for
a homicide.  But I do look for
stories that allow me to practice what I occasionally think of as subversive
chemistry writing, narratives in which I can weave some toxicology, sneak a few
chemical formulas or Periodic Table references into the tale.

There’s more at play here, though, than my interest in
narrative story telling techniques. 
Forensic toxicology raises some fascinating questions about the role of
scientific detective work. Can good chemistry always solve a murder? Even if we
find a poison in a body, does that always lead us to the killer? And even if we
know the killer, does that always lead us to justice?

Which brings me, of course, to The Atavist’s recent
successful true crime single, The Kalinka
Affair.  The story is written
by Joshua Hammer, a former foreign bureau chief for Newsweek, and a man with a long-time fascination with murder himself.
His full-length books include Murder in
Yosemite (the story of a 1999 mass murder in the national park), Sherlock Holmes’ London, and Where Agatha Christie Dreamed Up Murder.

You’ve probably guessed by now that The Kalinka Affair involves poison and murder. That’s my focus more
than the author’s – this is foremost a story of a father’s full-fanatic drive to
find justice in the matter of his daughter’s death. That passionate, guilt-and-love driven parental determination drives the
narrative forward through almost 30 years of twists and turns, international
politics and criminal undertakings, and unforgiving rage. “Bamberski would leave
his job, burn through much of his life savings, and devote thousands of hours
to pursuing his quarry,” Hammer writes.

Continue reading “The Long Quest to Catch a Poisoner” →

Did You Like My Ebook? Don’t Lie!

Posted on by Carl Zimmer


Lying300Lying. By Sam Harris. Kindle. $2.99

Reviewed by Maia Szalavitz

I
won’t lie:  I didn’t much like Sam
Harris’ ebook Lying, and had I paid
money for it rather than received it as a free download, I might have felt
cheated.  While I’ve enjoyed some of his
earlier work, this book felt flimsy and overly simplistic.

Harris
offered the free download when Jonah Lehrer’s deceptions were just beginning to
be seen as part of a larger pattern: 
many of my colleagues felt that this was a cheap shot and an obnoxious
type of self-promotion, but I wasn’t offended and thought it might offer
insight into Lehrer’s deceit.

I
was wrong:  what we have here is a book
that tries to make the case that lying is virtually always wrong, with little
more nuance than a “Just Say No” campaign. 
The few scraps of science that are included— for example, a studies
showing that one tenth of the information shared by husbands and wives involves
deceit, and a full 38% of conversations among college students include at least
one lie— are fascinating.

But
they go nowhere. Given the high level of
deception found, it seems clear that lying is common human behavior and often serves
some useful purpose, a discussion of which could have been informative.  Instead, we get lectures on why we should
always share difficult truths. We’re even given the classic example of learning
of an affair of which one partner is unaware, with nary a thought to the
possibility that the couple could have an open marriage or a mutually agreed
“don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

Moreover,
Harris actually wants us to tell people that they do “look fat in that,” in
order to spur better wardrobe choices and/or weight loss and to avoid “robbing”
our friends or partners of a chance to change for the better. (No mention is
made of the possibility that such truth telling can be a form of hostility).

There’s
no discussion of the developmental significance of lying in a child’s
understanding of the minds of others, no look at the evolutionary aspects of
deception, no exploration of why social lies are so common— nothing here but
moralizing with little subtlety, let alone material that could guide understanding
of the sad situation that undid a promising journalist.  Honest!

 

Maia3Maia Szalavitz is a neuroscience journalist for TIME.com and the author of five books, most recently Born for Love: Why Empathy is Essential—and Endangered, with Bruce Perry, M.D. Ph.D.

Deep Water: A Pretty Good TED Ebook (Really!) About Climate Change

Posted on by Carl Zimmer

DeepwaterDeep Water: As Polar Ice Melts, Scientists Debate How High Our Oceans Will Rise, by Daniel Grossman. TED 2012. TED App for iPhone/iPad, Kindle, Nook. Book web site

[Editor's note: John Dupuis, the author of this review, is the Acting Associate University Librarian at York University in Toronto. He's joined me and other Download the Universe editors on several panels about science ebooks, and he's tempered our optimism with thoughtful skepticism about how ebooks can add to civilization's body of knowledge. (What happens when no one makes Kindles anymore?) Recently, Dupuis wrote about a new ebook from TED on his own blog, Confessions of A Science Librarian. I asked him if he could write an expanded version for Download the Universe.–Carl Zimmer]


Guest review by John Dupuis

I feel a little weird reviewing this book. It's a TED book, you see. What's a TED book, you ask? I'll let TED tell you:

Shorter than a novel, but longer than an magazine article–a TED Book is a great way to feed your craving for ideas anytime. TED Books are short original electronic books produced every two weeks by TED Conferences. Like the best TEDTalks, they're personal and provocative, and designed to spread great ideas. TED Books are typically under 20,000 words–long enough to unleash a powerful narrative, but short enough to be read in a single sitting.

They're like TED talks, in other words, but they provide longer, more in-depth treatment than is possible in a short talk. On the surface, that's a really great idea. In practice, it can be a bit problematic–just like TED talks.

Carl Zimmer and Evgeny Morozov have gone into fairly extensive detail about the dark side of TED talks and TED books. Basically, the format encourages a kind of hip superficiality and fame-mongering. Ideas want to be famous, to paraphrase the famous saying that information wants to be free. In fact, ideas should be deep and well thought-out. And, you know, even perhaps a little on the valid side, too.

Which brings me to this particular TED book: Daniel Grossman's Deep Water. Here's how TED describes it:

As global warming continues, the massive ice caps at Earth’s poles are melting at an increasingly alarming rate. Water once safely anchored in glacial ice is surging into the sea. The flow could become a deluge, and millions of people living near coastlines are in danger. Inundation could impact every nation on earth. But scientists don’t yet know how fast this polar ice will melt, or how high our seas could rise. In an effort to find out, a team of renowned and quirky geologists takes a 4,000-mile road trip across Western Australia. They collect fossils and rocks from ancient shorelines and accumulate new evidence that ancient sea levels were frighteningly high during epochs when average global temperatures were barely higher than today. In Deep Water veteran environmental journalist, radio producer and documentary filmmaker Daniel Grossman explores the new and fascinating science — and scientists — of sea-level rise. His investigation turns up both startling and worrisome evidence that humans are upsetting a delicate natural equilibrium. If knocked off balance, it could hastily melt the planet’s ice and send sea levels soaring.

Continue reading “Deep Water: A Pretty Good TED Ebook (Really!) About Climate Change” →