Books—March 2008

A friend asked me what books I'd bought on a trip to the Big City, my opportunity to genuflect at a real-live bricks-and-mortar temple (or two) of the printed page, so here they are…

The List

Icelandic Language

• Ensk–Íslensk/Íslensk–Ensk Orðabók by Steinarr Guðjónson. Orðabókaútgáfan: 2000. (Hardback.)

(It is not my expectation that I will be the primary user of this impressive volume.)

Mathematics

• 100 Great Problems of Elementary Mathematics: Their History and Solution by Heinrich Dörrie. Dover, 1965. (Paperback.)
• An Imaginary Tale: The Story of √–1 by Paul J. Nahin. Princeton University Press: 2007. (First paperback ed., with new preface and appendices; orig. hardback ed. 1998.)
• Nets, Puzzles, and Postmen: An Exploration of Mathematical Connections by Peter M. Higgins. Oxford University Press, 2008. (Paperback.)
• The Pythagorean Theorem: A 4,000-Year History by Eli Maor. Princeton University Press: 2007. (Hardback.)

Neurophilosophy/Psychology

• The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better by Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee. Random House: 2007. (Paperback.)
• The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind by Marvin Minsky. Simon & Schuster, 2007. (Paperback repr. of 2006 hardback ed.)

Philosophy

• Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers: From Structuralism to Post-humanism by John Lechte. Routledge, 2007. (Paperback.)
• Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (3rd ed.) by Michael J. Loux. Routledge: 2006. (Paperback.)

Science Speculation

• The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. HarperCollins: 2007. (Hardback.) (See also details on the Canadian edition, Weisman's 2005 article on the same topic, and the book's Web site.)

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