A book review by Tim Longville, in Hortus, 23(2), summer 2009, pp. 113-8

This book, unfussily but handsomely designed and produced (good paper, print given room to breathe, a central section of colour illustrations on art paper, sharply printed at a good size), is not about either gardens or gardening. But it is a book about plants and people and how the latter have used the former - for pleasure, profit and ‘psychological relief’ (including that provided by religious symbolism) - and therefore of considerable interest to any curious gardener. Its author is a retired professor of chemistry who has lived, taught and engaged in research all over the world, including in France, Britain, Belgium, Brazil, America and New Zealand. So, unsurprisingly, there is much in his pages about the biology and chemistry of his chosen group of plants - a group which of course includes all the many varieties of oranges, lemons, grapefruits and limes but also such relative oddities as calamandrins, kumquats and uglis. (At the end of one of the more formidable of those episodes of chemical analysis, he adds with characteristic charm - and the equally characteristic gentle teacher-ly hint that you could do better if you tried -, ‘You are forgiven if you skipped the last paragraph.’ Not all of the Professor’s scientific detail is formidable, though. Some is simply, ah, fascinating. For example, if I understand him correctly, the effects of Viagra are apparently increased by a regular intake of grapefruit, since that fruit contains chemicals [bergapten and bergamotin] which deactivate an enzyme in the small intestine which otherwise damages such ‘medications’ before they get into the bloodstream. Cue a rush on grapefruit once the news gets out?)

This is a monumental production, in many respects. The copious book of 562 pages is organized in only ten chapters. Accordingly, these are hefty. This, together with the style, whose characteristic is not levity, loaded as it is with both long words and many quotations, makes for a reading a bit difficult at times. However, this is more than compensated by the author’s admirable mastery of his material.The author, who has already several science historical books under his belt, teaches at Göttingen.

The New Chemistry. Nina Hall, ed. xi + 493 pp. Cambridge University Press

As a teenager, I was given a copy of John C. Slater’s Modern Physics. It would be hard to overstate its influence—it made a scientist out of me. It belonged to a class of very special books that are authoritative despite being popularizations, that are encyclopedic but also report the state of the science, that are conceptually rigorous but are light on equations and avoid jargon. Such books nurture a sense of vocation in budding scientists and are thus invaluable. The New Chemistry, which aspires to showcase the best of contemporary chemistry, may belong on the sparsely populated shelf of books in this class.

By Hervé This

The subject of this meandering and rather appealingly eccentric if always well researched and reasonably well written book is quite fascinating: the actual science of cooking and of taste. What the author argues in the most general of terms across a variety of essays on a range of different gustatory and gastronomic subjects is that science, and specifically chemistry and biology, can be used to explain various aspects of the human sense of taste, along with various culinary behaviors and traditions, and methods of food production.
    Unfortunately, a much too abbreviated and lightweight introduction stands before the first of the extremely interesting case studies that comprise this book,  two of the most compelling of which are “Le Bouillon,” or a history of the art of bouillon making matted against a backdrop of what science now shows us is the optimal way of producing same, or “How Salt Modifies Taste” (the presence of salt enhances our ability to taste sugar, and reduces our sensitivity to tastes that are bitter).

Stephanie Reich, Christian Thomsen, Janine Maultzsch, Carbon Nanotubes. Basic Concepts and Physical Properties, Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, 2004, ISBN 3-527-40386-8, ix + 214 pp.
Günter Schmid, ed., Nanoparticles. From Theory to Application, Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, 2004, ISBN 3_527-30507-6, x + 434 pp.
C. N. R. Rao, Achim Müller, Anthony Cheetham, eds., The Chemistry of Nanomaterials. Synthesis, Properties and Applications, Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, 2 vols., 2004, ISBN 3-527-30686-2, xv + 740 pp.
Michael Köhler, Wolfgang Fritzsche, Nanotechnology. An Introduction to Nanostructuring Techniques, Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, 2004, ISBN 3-527-30750-8, 272 pp.

by Jean Starobinski, translated by Sophie Hawkes
2003, New York, NY, Zone Books, 468 pp., £22.50, ISBN 1 890951 20 X

To focus on semantics, for well chosen terms, provides one with a red thread to follow across intellectual history. This book traces the evolutionary history of two closely related words, ‘action’ and ‘reaction’. It was quite a few years in the making: the text originated in a presidential address to the Modern Language Association (Modern Language Review, 1975, 70, xxi–xxxi), and in his preface, Starobinski recollects how his research on the action/reaction pair started life in meetings of the History of Ideas Club during his three years at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore.

Editorial Reviews
Review
New Scientist :
"Did you know there are a billion citrus trees under cultivation, or that grapefruit juice may potentiate the effects of Viagra? Citrus mines over two millennia of history to explore the spread of these fruits out of Asia, their commercialisation in the United States, and [their] enduring symbolism the world over."—New Scientist

Sunday Times (UK) :
"Stimulating. . . . Laszlo, a retired French chemist, takes us on a journey from the orangeries of Versailles, via the limes of the Royal Navy to the citriculture of modern Florida. It was only in the 1920s, he tells us, that orange juice became ‘an integral part of the American breakfast’, after the great flu epidemic of 1918-19. Laszlo shows that the citrus fruit ‘is a treasure trove of chemicals that are highly useful to humankind’—which also happens to taste wonderful."—Sunday Times (UK)

Communicating Science

Communicating Science to Broader Audiences

Wed, 2007-01-10 18:06 — dnlee5
I recently attended a workshop that touched on the ever important issue - communicating science to the general public. The discussion was intriguing and informative, but I still felt a little hungry for information.

My google searches yielded the discovery of a bonafide conference/workshop about this topic. On April 12-13, 2007, the University of Nebraska-Linclon campus is hosting a conference. I'll be there.

here's the link:
http://physics.unl.edu/~diandra/communicatingscience/

Also,
I was gifted a wonderful book entitled "Communicating Science" by Pierre Laszlo. It's divided into three sections: a) communicating with fellow scientists, b) communicating with general audiences, and c) communicating with policy-makers.
I've read the entire book already. If I were still taking classes, I'd love to take a seminar-style class on this topic and use this book.

Toronto Globe and Mail Saturday,     January 26, 2002
Salt’s savoury story
Reviewed By Zsuzsi Gartner
Salt: A World History
By Mark Kurlansky
Knopf Canada, 496 pages, $34.95
Salt: Grain of Life
By Pierre Laszlo
Translated by Mary Beth Mader
Columbia University Press,
194 pages, $35.50

Somewhere high above New York’s Rockefeller Plaza in an AOL
Time Warner boardroom, the movie of the century (never mind that
the century is still a toddler and not yet toilet-trained) is being
discussed. Someone in a nubbly prosciutto-toned linen Nehru jacket
who just flew in from L.A. is talking epic, is talking spin-offs, is
talking tie-ins, is talking action figures, is talking point-of-purchase,
is talking about the ching-ching-ching of a hundred thousand cash registers singing. “Okay, so we have
Sinbad meets The Last Emperor meets The Ten Commandments meets Gladiator meets The Scarlet
Pimpernel meets Gone With the Wind meets Gandhi meets Giant meets The China Syndrome and Erin
Brockovitch with heavy dashes of Babette’s Feast and Emeril Live!”

The author of the property in question, sitting hitherto unnoticed on a
chair by the window, slides to the floor. “Get the smelling salts!”
someone yells—because they once heard this in a movie and
because, well, some salt in the proceedings at this juncture seems
appropriate.

Citrus: A History

Review by Michael S. Gant

Pierre Laszlo's curious study of oranges, lemons, clementines, grapefruits and more tart treats skips lightly through the botanical and cultural history of the fruit that conquered scurvy on the high seas and helped kick-start the 20th-century economies of California and Florida. This erudite gallimaufry (a chemist by trade, Laszlo has also written a book devoted entirely to salt) offers detours on everything from the construction of Italian orangeries to the sometimes sordid politics of early Southern California (the aside on citrus land baron George Chaffey, who also created the Mutual Water Company, sounds like the source material for Chinatown). The text takes time out for recipes (the lime chutney sounds good) and citrus imagery in art and poetry. A segment (that's plainly the right word in this context) discusses the themes and motifs of California orange-crate labels, of which, the author calculates, there are some 8,000 designs (thus explaining their persistent abundance in antique stores). Oranges ripen in winter, which adds to the seasonal nature of this tangy grab bag.

(By Pierre Laszlo; University of Chicago; 262 pages; $25 cloth)