Fire & Ice: The Volcanoes of the Solar System by Natalie Starkey

Summary from Edelweiss:

Fire and Ice is the first book to examine the extraterrestrial volcanoes of our Solar System

The volcano – among the most familiar and perhaps the most terrifying of all geological phenomena. However, Earth isn’t the only planet to harbour volcanoes. In fact, the Solar System, and probably the entire Universe, is littered with them. Our own Moon, which is now a dormant piece of rock, had lava flowing across its surface billions of years ago, while Mars can be credited with the largest volcano in the Solar System, Olympus Mons, which stands 25km high. While Mars’s volcanoes are long dead, volcanic activity continues in almost every other corner of the Solar System, in the most unexpected of locations.

We tend to think of Earth volcanoes as erupting hot, molten lava and emitting huge, billowing clouds of incandescent ash. However, it isn’t necessarily the same across the rest of the Solar System. For a start, some volcanoes aren’t even particularly hot. Those on Pluto, for example, erupt an icy slush of substances such as water, methane, nitrogen or ammonia, that freeze to form ice mountains as hard as rock. While others, like the volcanoes on one of Jupiter’s moons, Io, erupt the hottest lavas in the Solar System onto a surface covered in a frosty coating of sulphur.
Whether they are formed of fire or ice, volcanoes are of huge importance for scientists trying to picture the inner workings of a planet or moon. Volcanoes dredge up materials from the otherwise inaccessible depths and helpfully deliver them to the surface. The way in which they erupt, and the products they generate, can even help scientists ponder bigger questions on the possibility of life elsewhere in the Solar System.
Fire and Ice is an exploration of the Solar System’s volcanoes, from the highest peaks of Mars to the intensely inhospitable surface of Venus and the red-hot summits of Io, to the coldest, seemingly dormant icy carapaces of Enceladus and Europa, an unusual look at how these cosmic features are made, and whether such active planetary systems might host life.

Fire & Ice is a dense read but a really interesting one about space volcanoes! Who knew there were ice volcanoes (“cryovolcanoes”) on some of the moons of Saturn and Neptune! And that Pluto, rather than just being a hunk of space rock, has evidence of somewhat recent geologic activity? Since our current instrumentation hasn’t quite let us send equipment down to the surfaces of the more-extreme environments of the planets and moons of the Solar System (we’ve been able to get to Mars, but that’s volcanically inactive at the moment so while it can provide information about it’s past, it can’t provide the same data an a planet with active volcanoes can), Earth volcanoes are used as our model for understanding these far-away places. Starkey takes us through the ways scientists are using Earth geology, chemistry, physics, imaging, etc. and comparing it with data provided from various space missions to learn more about the composition and geologic life outside of our planet. Very interesting.

Dear FTC: I bought a copy of this book for my birthday a few weeks ago.

Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica’s Journey into the Dark Antarctic Night by Julian Sancton

Summary from Goodreads: The harrowing true survival story of an early polar expedition that went terribly awry–with the ship frozen in ice and the crew trapped inside for the entire sunless, Antarctic winter–in the tradition of David Grann, Nathaniel Philbrick, and Hampton Sides

In August 1897, thirty-one-year-old commandant Adrien de Gerlache set sail aboard the Belgica, fueled by a profound sense of adventure and dreams of claiming glory for his native Belgium. His destination was the uncharted end of the earth: the icy continent of Antarctica. But the commandant’s plans for a three-year expedition to reach the magnetic South Pole would be thwarted at each turn. Before the ship cleared South America, it had already broken down, run aground, and lost several key crew members, leaving behind a group with dubious experience for such an ambitious voyage.

As the ship progressed into the freezing waters, the captain had to make a choice: turn back and spare his men the potentially devastating consequences of getting stuck, or recklessly sail deeper into the ice pack to chase glory and fame. He sailed on, and the Belgica soon found itself stuck fast in the icy hold of the Antarctic continent. The ship would winter on the ice. Plagued by a mysterious, debilitating illness and besieged by the monotony of their days, the crew deteriorated as their confinement in suffocating close quarters wore on and their hope of escape dwindled daily. As winter approached the days grew shorter, until the sun set on the magnificent polar landscape one last time, condemning the ship’s occupants to months of quarantine in an endless night.

Forged in fire and carved by ice, Antarctica proved a formidable opponent for the motley crew. Among them was Frederick Cook, an American doctor–part scientist, part adventurer, part P.T. Barnum–whose unorthodox methods delivered many of the crew from the gruesome symptoms of scurvy and whose relentless optimism buoyed their spirits through the long, dark polar night. Then there was Roald Amundsen, a young Norwegian who went on to become a storied polar explorer in his own right, exceeding de Gerlache’s wildest dreams by leading the first expeditions to traverse the Northwest Passage and reach the South Pole.

Drawing on firsthand accounts of the Belgica’s voyage and exclusive access to the ship’s logbook, Sancton tells the tale of its long, isolated imprisonment on the ice–a story that NASA studies today in its research on isolation for missions to Mars. In vivid, hair-raising prose, Sancton recounts the myriad forces that drove these men right up to and over the brink of madness.

Madhouse at the End of the Earth was an OK read, for me. I felt like it dragged a lot in the beginning, with getting the ship and the crew together and everyone’s disparate personalities and nationalities and fitness (or lack thereof) for an uncertain Antarctic voyage. Plus the Prologue is about a doctor who is a prisoner being visited by his old explorer buddy that seems like a real odd opener for the book. But once the Antarctic part of the history started – right about when the ship left Argentina and really embarked on the most dangerous part of the trip – it was very good. It’s so amazing that the data collected about the effect of isolation on human bodies and minds is still used by NASA to inform deep space exploration.

It’s out in paperback now! (And it’s currently one of our March Picks of the Month at the store.)

Brief content warning for harm to animals and mental health deterioration.

Dear FTC: I read a digital galley from the publisher via Edelweiss.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Universe by Jorge Cham and Daniel Whiteson

Summary from Goodreads: Delightful, funny, and yet rigorous and intelligent: only Jorge and Daniel can reach this exquisite balance. –Carlo Rovelli, author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and Helgoland

You’ve got questions: about space, time, gravity, and the odds of meeting your older self inside a wormhole. All the answers you need are right here.

As a species, we may not agree on much, but one thing brings us all together: a need to know. We all wonder, and deep down we all have the same big questions. Why can’t I travel back in time? Where did the universe come from? What’s inside a black hole? Can I rearrange the particles in my cat and turn it into a dog?

Researcher-turned-cartoonist Jorge Cham and physics professor Daniel Whiteson are experts at explaining science in ways we can all understand, in their books and on their popular podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe. With their signature blend of humor and oh-now-I-get-it clarity, Jorge and Daniel offer short, accessible, and lighthearted answers to some of the most common, most outrageous, and most profound questions about the universe they’ve received.

This witty, entertaining, and fully illustrated book is an essential troubleshooting guide for the perplexing aspects of reality, big and small, from the invisible particles that make up your body to the identical version of you currently reading this exact sentence in the corner of some other galaxy. If the universe came with an FAQ, this would be it.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Universe is a fun collection of essays about, well, physics-based FAQs about the universe. It’s very much in the style of Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And other Questions about Dead Bodies with humor and funny cartoons to help illustrate a point. I may have felt my long-dormant dread of quantum mechanics rise from the dead during a few chapters – that was easily my least favorite part of physics class. A good book for pretty much all ages middle-school and up.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Universe is out now!

Dear FTC: I read a digital galley of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss.

Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose by Leigh Cowart

Summary from Goodreads: An exploration of why people all over the world love to engage in pain on purpose–from dominatrices, religious ascetics, and ultramarathoners to ballerinas, icy ocean bathers, and sideshow performers

Masochism is sexy, human, reviled, worshipped, and can be delightfully bizarre. Deliberate and consensual pain has been with us for millennia, encompassing everyone from Black Plague flagellants to ballerinas dancing on broken bones to competitive eaters choking down hot peppers while they cry. Masochism is a part of us. It lives inside workaholics, tattoo enthusiasts, and all manner of garden variety pain-seekers.

At its core, masochism is about feeling bad, then better—a phenomenon that is long overdue for a heartfelt and hilarious investigation. And Leigh Cowart would know: they are not just a researcher and science writer—they’re an inveterate, high-sensation seeking masochist. And they have a few questions: Why do people engage in masochism? What are the benefits and the costs? And what does masochism have to say about the human experience?

By participating in many of these activities themselves, and through conversations with psychologists, fellow scientists, and people who seek pain for pleasure, Cowart unveils how our minds and bodies find meaning and relief in pain—a quirk in our programming that drives discipline and innovation even as it threatens to swallow us whole.

Hurts So Good is a really interesting exploration of the science and psychology of why humans put themselves through significant pain for pleasure. Cowart explores the obvious source of pain for pleasure – giving or receiving pain for sexual pleasure, including in her own s/m practices – but also ultramarathoners, ballet dancers, hot pepper eaters, Polar Bear plungers, etc. and then also looks at where the activities begin to tip over into self-harm (eating disorders, compulsive exercise, cutting). She interviews a lot of researchers on the cutting edge of pain research for each topic.

All the trigger warnings, given the above. Cowart is very frank about her own experience with eating disorders and self-harm (she was a serious ballet dancer) and does not pull her punches. The chapter where she discusses self-harm there is a lengthy content warning.

Dear FTC: I read a digital galley from the publisher via Edelweiss.

Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin by Megan Rosenbloom

Summary from Goodreads: On bookshelves around the world, surrounded by ordinary books bound in paper and leather, rest other volumes of a distinctly strange and grisly sort: those bound in human skin. Would you know one if you held it in your hand?

In Dark Archives, Megan Rosenbloom seeks out the historic and scientific truths behind anthropodermic bibliopegy–the practice of binding books in this most intimate covering. Dozens of such books live on in the world’s most famous libraries and museums. Dark Archives exhumes their origins and brings to life the doctors, murderers, innocents, and indigents whose lives are sewn together in this disquieting collection. Along the way, Rosenbloom tells the story of how her team of scientists, curators, and librarians test rumored anthropodermic books, untangling the myths around their creation and reckoning with the ethics of their custodianship.

A librarian and journalist, Rosenbloom is a member of The Order of the Good Death and a cofounder of their Death Salon, a community that encourages conversations, scholarship, and art about mortality and mourning. In Dark Archives–captivating and macabre in all the right ways–she has crafted a narrative that is equal parts detective work, academic intrigue, history, and medical curiosity: a book as rare and thrilling as its subject.

I was really interested in Dark Archives because one always hears rumors about “human skin books” or, as they are properly known, anthropodermic bibliopegy. Rosenbloom’s team works to identify, trace, and confirm the existence of books bound with human skin and, far from being a creepy or salacious book, Dark Archives is very much about the archivist’s role and responsibility to care for and look after the provenance of these books. It is very much why are these books bound in human skin, why would someone lie about a book being bound in such a way (which is part of what her project does, test the binding to see if the claim is legitimate – if possible, since the test does destroy a tiny bit of the binding, some books are unable to be tested that way), and how does bodily autonomy and consent – or lack thereof – come into the process (Rosenbloom gets into deeded body programs and similar types of projects because, in theory, one could deed their skin to be tanned and used as a book binding).

Dear FTC: I bought my copy of this book.

The Icepick Surgeon by Sam Kean

Summary from Goodreads: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science

From New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean comes the gripping, untold history of science’s darkest secrets, “a fascinating book [that] deserves a wide audience” (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

Science is a force for good in the world—at least usually. But sometimes, when obsession gets the better of scientists, they twist a noble pursuit into something sinister. Under this spell, knowledge isn’t everything, it’s the only thing—no matter the cost. Bestselling author Sam Kean tells the true story of what happens when unfettered ambition pushes otherwise rational men and women to cross the line in the name of science, trampling ethical boundaries and often committing crimes in the process.

The Icepick Surgeon masterfully guides the reader across two thousand years of history, beginning with Cleopatra’s dark deeds in ancient Egypt. The book reveals the origins of much of modern science in the transatlantic slave trade of the 1700s, as well as Thomas Edison’s mercenary support of the electric chair and the warped logic of the spies who infiltrated the Manhattan Project. But the sins of science aren’t all safely buried in the past. Many of them, Kean reminds us, still affect us today. We can draw direct lines from the medical abuses of Tuskegee and Nazi Germany to current vaccine hesitancy, and connect icepick lobotomies from the 1950s to the contemporary failings of mental-health care. Kean even takes us into the future, when advanced computers and genetic engineering could unleash whole new ways to do one another wrong.

Unflinching, and exhilarating to the last page, The Icepick Surgeon fuses the drama of scientific discovery with the illicit thrill of a true-crime tale. With his trademark wit and precision, Kean shows that, while science has done more good than harm in the world, rogue scientists do exist, and when we sacrifice morals for progress, we often end up with neither.

I’m still running the COVID19 serosurvey at work – and will be until about May 2022 – so I read between subjects and waiting for the centrifuge to finish spinning in about 10 minutes chunks. Ideal books for this broken-up reading time are non-fiction with short arcs/many chapters – The Icepick Surgeon by Sam Kean totally fits this bill. Kean is a good storyteller of science history and this book is basically “what happens when scientists go bad”. Like, real bad. Some of them were pretty awful to start with, some got on that slippery slope of “justifying their actions” and wind up making terrible decisions.

CW for, well, it’s about scientists throughout history going bad so there’s racism, misogyny, sexism, slavery/slave trading, bad ethics, animal mistreatment, abuse of patients, somewhat graphic descriptions of surgical prodecures, etc.

Dear FTC: I read a digital galley from the publisher via Edelweiss.

The Kissing Bug: A True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation’s Neglect of a Deadly Disease by Daisy Hernández

Summary from Goodreads: Growing up in a New Jersey factory town in the 1980s, Daisy Hernández believed that her aunt had become deathly ill from eating an apple. No one in her family, in either the United States or Colombia, spoke of infectious diseases, and even into her thirties, she only knew that her aunt had died of a rare illness called Chagas. But as Hernández dug deeper, she discovered that Chagas—or the kissing bug disease—is more prevalent in the United States than the Zika virus. Today, more than three hundred thousand Americans have Chagas.

Why do some infectious diseases make headlines and others fall by the wayside? After her aunt’s death, Hernández begins searching for answers about who our nation chooses to take care of and who we ignore. Crisscrossing the country, she interviews patients, epidemiologists, and even veterinarians with the Department of Defense. She learns that outside of Latin America, the United States is the only country with the native insects—the “kissing bugs”—that carry the Chagas parasite. She spends a night in southwest Texas hunting the dreaded bug with university researchers. She also gets to know patients, like a mother whose premature baby was born infected with the parasite, his heart already damaged. And she meets one cardiologist battling the disease in Los Angeles County with local volunteers. 

The Kissing Bug tells the story of how poverty, racism, and public policies have conspired to keep this disease hidden—and how the disease intersects with Hernández’s own identity as a niece, sister, and daughter; a queer woman; a writer and researcher; and a citizen of a country that is only beginning to address the harms caused by Chagas, and the dangers it poses. A riveting and nuanced investigation into racial politics and for-profit healthcare in the United States, The Kissing Bug reveals the intimate history of a marginalized disease and connects us to the lives at the center of it all. 

I bumped The Kissing Bug up my TBR because Lupita raved about it on her IG – a combination memoir and investigation into the current state of Chagas disease in the Americas? OH yes.

It was a really good book to read in clinic while waiting for the centrifuge to finish between subjects. Appropriate, too, because infectious disease and public health. Hernández writes so poignantly and with incredible empathy not only about her aunt, who was afflicted with Chagas her entire life, but others in the US, Central, and South American who are suffering heart disease (treatable, if caught early enough in the infectious process). She also digs into current issues with diagnosis, treatment (ugh, Martin Shikrelli can eat a bag, y’all), and the lack of good resources for increasing surveillance and prevention of the disease. And considering that more “kissing bugs” will move farther into the United States, the question becomes how long until all the Nice White People decide to throw research dollars at a disease that is seen primarily as a disease of poverty/non-Americans in this country because it is now afflicting rich white people. (Hernández even came out to Iowa at one point to meet with Lou Kirchhoff, who lectured in our infectious disease epi course in grad school.)

An outstanding blend of memoir and science journalism. Pick this one up immediately.

Dear FTC: I read a digital galley of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss.

A Lady’s Formula for Love by Elizabeth Everett (The Secret Scientists of London #1)

Summary from Goodreads: What is a Victorian lady’s formula for love? Mix one brilliant noblewoman and her enigmatic protection officer. Add in a measure of danger and attraction. Heat over the warmth of humor and friendship, and the result is more than simple chemistry—it’s elemental.

Lady Violet Hughes is keeping secrets. First, she founded a clandestine sanctuary for England’s most brilliant female scientists. Second, she is using her genius on a confidential mission for the Crown. But the biggest secret of all? Her feelings for protection officer Arthur Kneland.

Solitary and reserved, Arthur learned the hard way to put duty first. But the more time he spends in the company of Violet and the eccentric club members, the more his best intentions go up in flames. Literally.

When a shadowy threat infiltrates Violet’s laboratories, endangering her life and her work, scientist and bodyguard will find all their theories put to the test—and learn that the most important discoveries are those of the heart.

I read A Lady’s Formula for Love in one sitting between 1am and 4am when I was having some insomnia (we had a complicated grant application going in so thanks for the anxiety work-brain).

The book opens as a series of explosions endangers Athena’s Retreat, a social club for ladies founded by Violet, Lady Greycliff. On the surface, the club is just a meeting place for the odder ladies of society to hear lectures, but that is merely a front for a network of laboratories housing the work of a number of innovative scientists, all women. The largest explosion happens just as Violet is seeing off the scientists to their homes but she’s whisked out of danger by Arthur Kneland. Arthur is a former Crown protection officer recently returned to England from decades abroad and hired by Violet’s stepson Grey to look after her (because Violet is secretly working out a chemical solution for the Crown, Grey is concerned that someone might harm Violet while he’s gone). Arthur is rather bewildered by the inner workings of the Club – which Violet gives up reluctantly and slowly – but he smoothly fits into the household. Although the first evenings explosions have an innocent origin, it soon becomes apparent that someone is out to either steal Violet’s work or prevent her from finishing period. Arthur just needs to get through this job until Grey returns and then he can return to his Scottish homeland and retire. Meanwhile, a Chartist movement has begun agitating in London and their leader may be the cause of the threat to Violet.

I liked the absentminded-scientist/bodyguard trope, particularly in an early Victorian setting. Arthur and Violet each have some very interesting personal history which played into how they viewed Society and class and informed the progression of their relationship. Violet in particular fascinated me, as a chemist in the early Victorian era who had previously failed as a Society matron and knows how close she comes to being considered an outcast. I did think the plot was unnecessarily messy, like if you put this down you might have trouble getting back into the plot. There are multiple McGuffins which complicates the reader’s understanding what was the real driver of the villain plot (I read the ending twice, and I’m a scientist, so I think some streamlining was needed).

I’m definitely interested in seeing what else is coming in this series. The scientists angle is fascinating and I think we’ve already been introduced to the next couple. Everett made the surrounding secondary characters very diverse – characters who have origins in many places in the British Empire at the time and some who are also LGBTQ+ in various ways. There is a character who is a transman and receives poor treatment from a member of his family, so a trigger warning for transphobia on the page.

Dear FTC: I read a digital galley of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss.