By Kitty Ferguson
Palgrave Macmillan | 320pgs
Release Date: January 3, 2012

Science writer Kitty Ferguson builds a revealing profile of physicist Stephen Hawking’s early life in the new book Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind. Hawking, best known for his research in the areas of theoretical cosmology and quantum gravity, is one of the world’s most renown scientists. With his lectures and writings, he has made highly complicated scientific theories interesting and palatable to the general public. “It’s not dumbing down [science]; it’s really making it accessible, hopefully, to a lot of people,” explains the author in an interview with NPR’s Fresh Air. Her book focuses on Hawking’s early childhood through his undergraduate and graduate work at Oxford and Cambridge respectively, and his diagnosis of ALS disease in the early 1960′s. At the time, doctors predicted he would not survive his 20′s, but the physicist has beaten the odds, and will celebrate his 70th birthday on January 8th. Read more…

By Dan Ariely
Harper | 352pgs
Release Date: June 1, 2010

Summary:
Duke Professor Dan Ariely further explores behavioral economics, and draws some interesting conclusions on human behavior in The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home, his follow-up to the bestselling Predictably Irrational. This time the focus is on the positive, and sometimes negative effects, that irrationality has on our personal and professional lives. Using his own creative experiments, he studies behavior influenced by the IKEA effect – the act of building something instills a sense of ownership that causes us to overvalue the object, and analyzes why huge monetary bonuses can actually be detrimental to job performance. (Hmm, maybe this book should be required reading on Wall Street?) Ariely uses the data from these experiments and his own experience recovering from a painful accident in his youth, to suggest solutions in overcoming negative behavior as individuals, and as a society. Yes, we may be irrational. But, that’s not all bad.
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By Herman Wouk
Little, Brown and Company | 192pgs
Release Date: April 5, 2010

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Herman Wouk endeavors to integrate the disciplines of faith and science in his latest book The Language God Talks: On Science and Religion. Reflecting on his own experiences, fictional writings and friendships with scientific luminaries during his 94 years of life, Wouk theorizes how religion and science can work together to answer life’s major questions about the purpose of humanity and the value of belief in a higher power. During his research into the history of the atomic bomb for the books The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, the author became acquainted with many leading scientists, including Steven Weinberg, Murray Gell-Mann, and Freeman Dyson. But, it was his friendship with Nobel laureate Richard Feynman that inspired Wouk and helped to re-affirm his faith.
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