96 Scientific American, September 2019
RECOMMENDED
By Andrea Gawrylewski
THIERRY FALISEGetty ImagesSomething Deeply Hidden:
Quantum Worlds and the Emergence
of Spacetime
by Sean Carroll. Dutton, 2019 ($29)Physicists are afraid of quan-
tum mechanics, explains the-
orist and author Carroll, be -
cause they do not understand
it—even though it lies at the
heart of their discipline. This book is Carroll’s un -
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mystical hand waving in favor of simply describ-
ing what is actually known. It is also an argument
for one of the more mind-boggling interpr et a-
tions of quantum mechanics, the many-worlds
theory, which posits that the simplest solution
to quantum paradoxes is to assume we live in
an ever expanding, many-branched multiverse
where every possibility is realized. Something
Deeply Hidden is enlight ening and refreshingly
bold. Is it right? No one yet knows. —Lee BillingsThe Deep History of Ourselves:
The Four-Billion-Year Story of How
We Got Conscious Brains
by Joseph LeDoux. Viking, 2019 ($30)Scientists often don’t explain
their work clearly. Neuroscien-
tist LeDoux is unlikely to be
accused of such neglect in his
book, which sets out the entire
histor y of life on Ear th. He describes how all living
organisms respond to basic needs: threats, food,
reproduction, and so on. Survival be hav iors,
though, are distinct from emotional responses.
A true feeling, LeDoux contends, emerges when,
say, a threat from the brain’s sur vival circuits is con-
veyed to “prefrontal” areas, which evolved quite
recently in humans to produce an awareness of fear
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of emotion that LeDoux puts for th raises the pro-
vocative question of whether any other animal but
humans experiences conscious feelings.—Gary StixCity of Omens: A Search for the
Missing Women of the Borderlands
by Dan Werb. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019 ($28)
Throughout the past decade
Tijuana has earned a reputa-
tion as one of the world’s
deadliest cities. Violence, sex
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have plagued the region and have made it vulner-
able to rapid disease transmission. Epidemiologist
Werb joined a research project in 2013 to help
investigate the spread of two relentless epidemics
in the border town: HIV and homicide. Women in
par ticular were being killed at a staggering rate.
́ïåàÿyï ́åy ́ïmyïy`ïÿyåï¹àĂj=yàU
investigates the causes of the femicide. He discov-
ers that the virus and murder were symptoms of
a larger, more ferocious epidemic targeting Tijua-
na’s women. “It was a multifaceted pathological
process closing in on them from all sides simulta-
neously,” Werb writes. —Sunya Bhutta
Humanity’s complicated relationship with the opium poppy dates back to our earliest civilizations. Psychiatrist Halpern and writer Blistein
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stor y peppered with color ful anecdotes about Hippocrates’ use of the drug to treat pain and other ailments, the brazen drug abuser Alexander
the Great, and the notorious 19th-century opium dens of San Francisco. Halpern and Blistein decry the view of addiction as a moral failing
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opioid deaths, they write, better prevention strategies can still save thousands of lives. — Tanya LewisOpium:
How an Ancient
Flower Shaped and
Poisoned Our World
by John H. Halpern and
David Blistein.
Hachette Books,
2019 ($29)REBEL soldiers in an opium poppy
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