76 Scientific American, April 2019
RECOMMENDED
By Andrea Gawrylewski
REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROMOUR PLANET,BY ALASTAIR FOTHERGILL AND KEITH SCHOLEY. COPYRIGHT © 2019.PUBLISHED BY TEN SPEED PRESS, A DIVISION OF PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE, LLC. IMAGE CREDIT: SERGEY GORSHKOVFrankie: How One Woman
Prevented a Pharmaceutical Disaster
by James Essinger and Sandra Koutzenko.
Wellspring, 2019 ($24.95)On March 8, 1962, pharma
cologist Frances (“Frankie”) O.
Kelsey, a medical reviewer at
the FDA, re ceived a most un
expected letter. The drug firm
that had pressured her to approve the distribution
of a sleep ing pill was withdrawing its request. For
nearly two years she had refused to accede—there
was not enough evidence to prove the medication
was safe. As it turned out, the drug, thalido mide,
which was also used to treat morning sick ness in
pregnancy, had been linked to birth defects in
Europe and elsewhere. In the end, it never pervad
ed the U.S. market. Writers Essinger and Koutzenko
unearth the story of Kelsey, who helped prevent a
public health tragedy by standing her ground in the
name of scientific proof. — Emiliano Rodríguez MegaEinstein’s Unfinished Revolution:
The Search for What Lies
beyond the Quantum
by Lee Smolin. Penguin Press, 2019 ($28)Quantum mechanics —the
basis for our understanding
of particles and forces—is argu
ably the most successful theory
in all of science. But its success
has come at a price: unresolved mysteries at the
theory’s heart, such as the paradoxical wavepar
ticle duality of quantum ob jects, can make modern
physics seem decidedly metaphysical. Simply put,
if mainstream interpretations of quantum mechan
ics are true, then the central, most cherished tenet
of physics—that an ob jective reality exists indepen
dently of our mind but is still comprehensible—must
be false. Smolin, a member of the Perimeter Institute
for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, argues against
this vexing status quo: “It is possible to be a realist
while living in the quantum universe.” — Lee BillingsEating the Sun: Small Musings
on a Vast Universe
by Ella Frances Sanders. Penguin Books, 2019 ($17)
From the atoms that make up
our bodies to the galactic su per
cluster that houses the Milky
Way, writer and illustrator
Sanders elucidates many of the
wonders of our world through drawings and con
versational explanations. While describing lunar the
ory, for example, she compares the moon and Earth’s
locked synchronous rotation to the movement
of dance partners: “How glad we can be, that we
have someone to figure out this universe business
alongside, to dance with, to gradually lengthen our
days and keep us slow.” A star’s death, trees help ing
one another survive and the ways our brain re writes
memories are also among the concepts San ders
de mystifies. Each inspiring snapshot feeds the cu
riosity of anyone in terested in exploring the universe
that we exist in and that exists in us. — Sunya Bhutta
This month the new nature documentary series Our Planet will be released on Netflix, from the same team that created Planet Earth and The Blue Planet.
The companion book by coproducers Fothergill and Scholey can certainly stand on its own, with many images leaving the viewer wondering, “How’d
they get that shot?”: A lone polar bear treks along the ridge of a jagged, blue and glistening ice cap in the Russian High Arctic ( above ). An iridescent
turquoise European king fisher seems frozen in time as it dives for minnows off its mossy perch. A brown bear peeks around the tree in a Slovenian forest—
its expression so human like, you could dare call it shy. This collection goes beyond photography, though, with a thorough discussion of the conservation
challenges facing many ecosystems on Earth. It’s not enough to merely look at the planet around us—we must understand how humans impact it.Our Planet
by Alastair Fothergill
and Keith Scholey,
with Fred Pearce.
Ten Speed Press,
2019 ($35)