Scientific American - February 2019

February 2019, ScientificAmerican.com 71

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By Andrea Gawrylewski

ANUP SHAH

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Nature’s Mutiny:

How the Little Ice Age of the Long

Seventeenth Century Transformed

the West and Shaped the Present

by Philipp Blom. Liveright, 2019 ($27.95)

For reasons still being ex -

plored, Earth plunged into the

Little Ice Age from the late 16th

to the early 19th century. Across

the Western world, failed har-

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son accounts, history writer Blom shows how the

climatic upheaval helped to usher in economic and

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cultural innovations while causing considerable hu -

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displaced by new farming practices, landless peas-

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en climate crisis, which is catalyzing similar shifts

and underscores that our choices dictate how glob-

al warming impacts human life. — Andrea Thompson

Good to Go: What the Athlete

in All of Us Can Learn from

the Strange Science of Recovery

by Christie Aschwanden.

W. W. Norton, 2018 ($27.95)

After a long run, journalist

Aschwanden went to relieve

her sore legs with nitrogen gas.

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ber and receiving a blast of frig-

id air, she felt a rush of adrenaline. “I was ready to

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ùïï›y

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enthusiasts have transformed into a multibillion-

dollar industr y, from sweating at infrared saunas to

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many ideas about what does help the body recov-

er—and what does not. — Emiliano Rodríguez Mega

The Discrete Charm of the Machine:

Why the World Became Digital

by Ken Steiglitz.

Princeton University Press, 2019 ($27.95)

Digital technology has such

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it is hard to remember how

recently we lived without it.

Computer scientist Steiglitz

examines the global transformation from analog

to digital and the ways it changed how we calcu-

late, communicate and entertain ourselves. He

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analog, such as waves traveling through the air

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1s, all in witty and cogent language. In addition

to celebrating the gains of the digital revolution,

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that the human brain uses both analog and digital

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remains hidden in the analog world, beyond the

àyD`›¹†ï›ymŸ‘ŸïD ̈`¹®ÈùïyàÖÛ €Clara Moskowitz

Sometime around the beginning of the 20th century, D

y ́‘D ̈yày®yà‘ymày‘ù ̈Dà ̈Ă¹ù﹆ï›y†¹àyåï幆ï›yŸ®D ̈DĂD ́†¹¹ï›Ÿ ̈ ̈åï¹åïD ̈§ŸïåÈày†yààym

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diminished through ecological mismanagement, loss of its normal prey species and the degradation of its natural habitat—and the riveting stor y of the

legendary hunter, Jim Corbett, who was commissioned by the British government to exterminate the animal. It is a haunting tale and a cautionary one, too;

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No Beast

So Fierce:

The Terrifying

True Story of the

Champawat Tiger,

the Deadliest Animal

in History

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