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IF TRAVEL broadens the mind, how about travel through time or space—or
even among other species? This month’s paperbacks stretch your mind.

John McNeill is concerned with travel by other species. If you’ve been
guiltily bored by a serious lecture on the threat of alien invasion—the
introduction of non-native species to a country, that is —then the nuggets
of pure gold offered by McNeill will leave you astonished. Did you know that
someone made the mad attempt to introduce all the species mentioned in
Shakespeare to the US? He began by setting free a few starlings in New York’s
Central Park. Clouds of raucous birds are now a serious nuisance in the city.
Something New Under the Sun (Penguin, £8.99 ISBN 0140295097) is a
thoughtful round-up of the damage done by these and other intruders, as well as
an indictment of human hubris.

If the recent past is too grim to dwell on, perhaps you could retreat to the
ancient past. The Keys of Egypt (HarperCollins, £7.99 ISBN
0006531438) by Lesley and Roy Adkins is a riveting account of the race to
decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs. Jean-François Champollion survived
ferocious competition and academic disapproval to read about how life was lived
thousands of years ago.

A quite different kind of life occupies the NASA scientists interviewed by
Laurence Bergreen. They’re pursuing life on Mars. Catch up on the story so far
in The Quest for Mars (HarperCollins, £6.99 ISBN 0006531342),
complete with skunk works schemes to send people to Mars (they must be smoking
stuff from the 1970s, comments another NASA scientist on hearing these plans).
You’ll feel you’re in the thick of the heated arguments about the criteria for
life, on Mars or in general. Bergreen had unrestricted access to NASA—and
it shows. Great stuff.