70 Scientific American, May 2020
RECOMMENDED
By Andrea Gawrylewski
ROY HSUGetty ImagesGirl Decoded: A Scientist’s Quest
to Reclaim Our Humanity by Bringing
Emotional Intelligence to Technology
by Rana el Kaliouby.
Penguin Random House, 2020 ($28)Is the Internet making us
meaner? We have gotten used
to hateful rhetoric and cruelty
on the Web, but it can bleed
into our real lives, too. Compu
ter scientist el Kaliouby argues that so ciety is facing
an “empathy crisis,” a widespread in ability to feel
com passion. This engaging memoir traces her for
mative experiences as a Muslim wo man in the Mid
dle East and as a lead re searcher at Cambridge. She
cofounded a tech startup with the mission to alter
how peo ple interact in the digital world. A pioneer
in the field of artificial emotional intelligence, el
Kalioby focuses on teaching computers how to re
spond to the gamut of facial expressions, with the
aim of devising tools that will humanize technology
before it dehumanizes us. — Sunya BhuttaThe Idea of the Brain:
The Past and Future of Neuroscience
by Matthew Cobb. Basic Books, 2020 ($32)If you know nothing about
neuroscience and need to get
up to speed fast, don’t go out
and buy an “Idiot’s Guide.”
In stead try this brilliant offer
ing, in which zoologist and science historian Cobb
dives into the fundamentals—and the frontiers—of
our understanding of the brain. For centuries scien
tists have compared the threepound organ to a
ma chine but have struggled to make the metaphor
fit reality. “Even the simplest animal brain is not a
com puter like anything we have built, nor one we
can yet envisage,” the author writes. Despite much
progress in the field, he notes, we still lack a solid
idea of how billions of neurons synchronize their
signals to produce a myriad of brain activities. It
may be centuries, Cobb posits, before we achieve
a fundamental understanding of consciousness and
other related mind mysteries. — Gary StixThe Planter of Modern Life:
Louis Bromfield and the Seeds
of a Food Revolution
by Stephen Heyman. W. W. Norton, 2020 ($26.95)
As a Pulitzer Prize–winning
author living in post–World
War I France, Louis Bromfield
cultivated friendships with
luminaries such as Edith
Wharton and Gertrude Stein—often by helping
them cultivate their gardens. By the 1930s Brom
field’s writing and movie career had made him rich
enough to establish Malabar, a cooperative farm
where he advocated for pesticidefree practices
and soil conservation. Writer Heyman brings this
champion of the organic food movement to life—
for example, he vividly describes Bromfield’s Indian
tour, which included a visit to a soil institute and an
allnight poker game with a maharani. With keen
attention to detail, Heyman dusts off this forgotten
figure who divided his time between filmic flashi
ness and farming. — Sophie Bushwick
Fungi make up an understudied kingdom of lifeforms, often ignored unless they manifest as mushrooms, ferment a drink or rot a wood structure.
But behind the scenes—and often belowground—fungi are the heavy lifters in complex nutrient exchanges and critical chemical reactions that
sustain our more familiar world of plants and animals. In winding prose, biologist Sheldrake explores every aspect of what we know about these
unusual beings. He documents impressive fungal feats, exploring how the organisms process toxic waste, synthesize medicines, build materials
that act like leather, foam or concrete, and more —looking to a future where humans can harness fungi’s ability to make new things and break
down old things that nothing else can. — Sarah Lewin FrasierEntangled
Life:
How Fungi
Make Our Worlds,
Change Our Minds &
Shape Our Futures
by Merlin Sheldrake.
Random House, 2020 ($28)ENOKI mushrooms cultivated in darkness and at
high CO 2 levels to obtain their long, white stalks.