鈥淚t鈥檚 been a while since I read a book with so much good sense, put over in
so amicable a style,鈥� said biologist Lawrence Hurst in his review of William
Schopf鈥檚 Cradle of Life (Princeton University Press). It鈥檚 an account of how
Schopf, a palaeobiologist, plugged a gap of several billion years in the Earth鈥檚
history when he discovered tiny fossils dating back nearly 4 billion years. It鈥檚
a great take on how life evolved on this planet, and you鈥檒l be able to answer
with confidence questions such as 鈥淲hat are stromatolites good for?鈥�
You can further expand your knowledge of obscure topics with William Dobbin鈥檚
Soils (Natural History Museum). How about phytoremediation, the ability of some
plants to absorb heavy-metal ions, which is used to clean up contaminated
ground? The book鈥檚 survey of the world鈥檚 soils鈥攖he Earth鈥檚 鈥渢hin
skin鈥濃�攊s enhanced by pictures of what happens when plants grow with too
little or too much of an element, such as sulphur. He also takes the reader
through a taxonomy of soils, 12 orders that describe the rich differences
between, for example, the spodosols of temperate forests鈥攁cidic and
leached of minerals鈥攁nd the mollisols, grassland soils rich in organic
materials. A fascinating read, albeit quite technical, it is aimed at a wide
audience, from gardeners to anyone interested in understanding how the stuff got
there in the first place.
From all that to nothing. Cambridge physicist John Barrow explores the
history of the concept of zero in The Book of Nothing (Vintage). It kicks off
with 鈥渁n account of how the zero came into being in ancient civilisations such
as the Babylonian and Egyptian鈥�, as reviewer Frank James put it, and goes on
from there.
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