Science Café H-LSAMP Book Discussion Group Suggestions for Spring 2014

1. Science Café H-LSAMP Book Discussion GroupSuggestions for Spring 2014

2. The People in the Trees – by HanyaYanagihara In HanyaYanagihara’s fascinating and multilayered debut novel, “The People in the Trees,” certain natives of Ivu’ ivu, a fictional Micronesian island, live well beyond 100 years. Only those who reach the age of 60 eat the meat of a local turtle, after which their bodies remain vigorous for centuries. The problem is, their minds deteriorate rapidly, so they become, like the turtles, feeble beings encased in hardy shells. The “dreamers,” as these elders are known, are banished to a remote part of the island, shunned by their mortal, but mentally sharp, kinsmen. A. Norton Perina, the novel’s protagonist and main narrator, first encounters the dreamers when he joins an anthropological expedition to Ivu ’ivu in 1950, shortly after graduating from Harvard Medical School. Perina realizes early that he lacks the empathy required to be a clinician. He’s interested in researching diseases but not in taking care of people who have them. He smuggles some of the turtle meat back to the States and feeds it to laboratory animals who, like the dreamers, become spectacularly long-lived but brain-damaged. His identification of the biochemical basis of these effects ultimately earns him a Nobel Prize. Perina, though, turns out to be as evil as he is brilliant. He adopts dozens of children from the island, one of whom accuses him of sexual abuse. He’s found guilty, and Perina — loosely based on Nobel laureate D. Carleton Gajdusek, discoverer of the brain disease kuru (similar to mad cow disease) and also a convicted child molester — narrates his story from a prison cell. Perina’s manuscript is edited by his protégé, Dr. Ronald Kubodera, one of the few people who remain loyal to Perina after his conviction.

3. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – by Juno Díaz The hero of JunotDíaz’s first novel is an overweight Dominican-American man named Oscar, a “ghetto nerd” from Paterson, N.J., and a devotee of what he somewhat grandly calls “the more speculative genres.” He means comic books, sword-and-sorcery novels, science fiction, and role-playing games. Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fukœ-the curse that has haunted the Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still waiting for his first kiss, is just its most recent victim. Díaz immerses us in the tumultuous life of Oscar and the history of the family at large, rendering with genuine warmth and dazzling energy, humor, and insight the Dominican-American experience, and, ultimately, the endless human capacity to persevere in the face of heartbreak and loss. A true literary triumph, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao confirms JunotDíaz as one of the best and most exciting voices of our time.

4. Salvage the Bones – by Jesmyn Ward This trim, fiercely poetic novel takes place in the fictional town of Bois Sauvage, Miss., in the 10 days leading up to Hurricane Katrina. The way that approaching storm compresses this story about devoted siblings recalls Jayne Anne Phillips’s “Lark and Termite,” which in 2009 was also a finalist for the National Book Award. But Ward is working on a more elemental level — no mystical sympathies between long-separated people, no kaleidoscopic impressions of the mentally impaired. On one level, “Salvage the Bones” is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. Ward survived Katrina with her family in De Lisle, Miss., and her description of the storm, the blind terror, the force of wind and water, is filled with visceral panic. What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.

5. Naming Infinity: A True Story of Religious Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity – by Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor In 1913, Russian imperial marines stormed an Orthodox monastery at Mt. Athos, Greece, to haul off monks engaged in a dangerously heretical practice known as Name Worshipping. Exiled to remote Russian outposts, the monks and their mystical movement went underground. Ultimately, they came across Russian intellectuals who embraced Name Worshipping—and who would achieve one of the biggest mathematical breakthroughs of the twentieth century, going beyond recent French achievements. Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor take us on an exciting mathematical mystery tour as they unravel a bizarre tale of political struggles, psychological crises, sexual complexities, and ethical dilemmas. At the core of this book is the contest between French and Russian mathematicians who sought new answers to one of the oldest puzzles in math: the nature of infinity. The French school chased rationalist solutions. The Russian mathematicians, notably Dmitri Egorov and Nikolai Luzin—who founded the famous Moscow School of Mathematics—were inspired by mystical insights attained during Name Worshipping. Their religious practice appears to have opened to them visions into the infinite—and led to the founding of descriptive set theory. The men and women of the leading French and Russian mathematical schools are central characters in this absorbing tale that could not be told until now. Naming Infinity is a poignant human interest story that raises provocative questions about science and religion, intuition and creativity.

6. Stealing into Print: Fraud, Plagiarism, and Misconduct in Scientific Publishing – by Marcel LaFollette False data published by a psychologist influence policies for treating the mentally retarded. A Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist resigns the presidency of Rockefeller University in the wake of a scandal involving a co-author accused of fabricating data. A university investigating committee declares that almost half the published articles of a promising young radiologist are fraudulent. Incidents like these strike at the heart of the scientific enterprise and shake the confidence of a society accustomed to thinking of scientists as selfless seekers of truth. Marcel LaFollette'sbook gives a penetrating examination of the world of scientific publishing in which such incidents of misconduct take place. Because influential scientific journals have been involved in the controversies, LaFollette focuses on the fragile "peer review" process--the editorial system of seeking pre-publication opinions from experts. She addresses the cultural glorification of science, which, combined with a scientist's thirst for achievement, can seem to make cheating worth the danger. She describes the great risks taken by the accusers--often scholars of less prestige and power than the accused--whom she calls "nemesis figures" for their relentless dedication to uncovering dishonesty. In sober warning, LaFollette notes that impatient calls from Congress, journalists, and taxpayers for greater accountability from scientists have important implications for the entire system of scientific research and communication.

7. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - by Rebecca Skloot Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells—taken without her knowledge in 1951—became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, and more. Henrietta’s cells have been bought and sold by the billions, yet she remains virtually unknown, and her family can’t afford health insurance. This New York Times bestseller takes readers on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers filled with HeLa cells, from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia, to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells a riveting story of the collision between ethics, race, and medicine; of scientific discovery and faith healing; and of a daughter consumed with questions about the mother she never knew. It’s a story inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we’re made of.

8. State of Wonder – by Ann Patchett Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author Ann Patchett returns with a provocative and assured novel of morality and miracles, science and sacrifice set in the Amazon rainforest. Patchettdelivers an enthrallingly innovative tale of aspiration, exploration, and attachment in State of Wonder—a gripping adventure story and a profound look at the difficult choices we make in the name of discovery and love. The best two female adversaries in recent memory cut a swath through the Amazon rain forest in Patchett's exotic, intelligent, ambitious, and engaging novel. Marina Singh, a straitlaced, sincere research scientist from Minnesota is sent to find and assess the progress of the unorthodox septuagenarian doctor, Dr. AnnikSwenson,who's gone native while on a fact-finding mission to extend female fertility. Marina is sent to the Amazon by Vogel Pharmaceuticals in pursuit of a Dr. Annik Swenson. Dr. Swenson's research into the miraculous post-menopausal fertility of the women of the Lakashi tribe is so valuable to Vogel that the company funds Dr. Swenson's secret work with an open checkbook and virtually no questions asked. Only a few months earlier, Marina's lab partner Anders Eckman was sent to the Amazon on the same mission. But Anders never returned, leaving Marina to puzzle over the announcement of his sudden death and leaving Mr. Fox, the 60-year-old suit-and-tie-wearing Vogel CEO who is also Marina's lover, to scramble for a "plan B." Dr. Marina Singh will be this "plan B."

9. Fortune’s Formula – by William Poundstone Fortune's Formula includes: how the mafia led to the early success of AT&T, how the mathematician who invented card counting became a hedge fund mogul, and how the man who started computer science discovered the formula for making money. In 1956 two Bell Labs scientists discovered the scientific formula for getting rich. One was mathematician Claude Shannon, neurotic father of our digital age, whose genius is ranked with Einstein's. The other was John L. Kelly Jr., a Texas-born, gun-toting physicist. Together they applied the science of information theory--the basis of computers and the Internet--to the problem of making as much money as possible, as fast as possible. Shannon and MIT mathematician Edward O. Thorp took the "Kelly formula" to Las Vegas. It worked. They realized that there was even more money to be made in the stock market. Thorp used the Kelly system with his phenomenonally successful hedge fund, Princeton-Newport Partners. Shannon became a successful investor, too, topping even Warren Buffett's rate of return. Fortune's Formula traces how the Kelly formula sparked controversy even as it made fortunes at racetracks, casinos, and trading desks. It reveals the dark side of this alluring scheme, which is founded on exploiting an insider's edge.

10. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – by Mark Haddon Mark Haddon's bitterly funny debut novel is a murder mystery of sorts. Fifteen-year-old Christopher Boone is mathematically gifted and socially hopeless, raised in a working-class home by parents who can barely cope with their child's quirks. He takes everything that he sees (or is told) at face value, and is unable to sort out the strange behavior of his elders and peers. He relaxes by groaning and doing math problems in his head, eats red - but not yellow or brown - foods and screams when he is touched. When his neighbor's poodle is killed and Christopher is falsely accused of the crime, he decides that he will take a page from Sherlock Holmes and track down the killer. As the mystery leads him to the secrets of his parents' broken marriage and then into an odyssey to find his place in the world, he must fall back on deductive logic to navigate the emotional complexities of a social world that remains a closed book to him. In the hands of first-time novelist Haddon, Christopher is a fascinating case study and, above all, a sympathetic boy: not closed off, as the stereotype would have it, but too open-overwhelmed by sensations, bereft of the filters through which normal people screen their surroundings. Christopher can only make sense of the chaos of stimuli by imposing arbitrary patterns ("4 yellow cars in a row made it a Black Day, which is a day when I don't speak to anyone and sit on my own reading books and don't eat my lunch and Take No Risks"). His literal-minded observations make for a kind of poetic sensibility and a poignant evocation of character.

11. Fever - by Mary Beth Keane Mary Beth Keane, named one of the 5 Under 35 by the National Book Foundation, has written a spectacularly bold and intriguing novel about the woman known as “Typhoid Mary,” the first person in America identified as a healthy carrier of Typhoid Fever. On the eve of the twentieth century, Mary Mallon emigrated from Ireland at age fifteen to make her way in New York City. Brave, headstrong, and dreaming of being a cook, she fought to climb up from the lowest rung of the domestic-service ladder. Canny and enterprising, she worked her way to the kitchen, and discovered in herself the true talent of a chef. Sought after by New York aristocracy, and with an independence rare for a woman of the time, she seemed to have achieved the life she’d aimed for when she arrived in Castle Garden. Then one determined “medical engineer” noticed that she left a trail of disease wherever she cooked, and identified her as an “asymptomatic carrier” of Typhoid Fever. With this seemingly preposterous theory, he made Mallon a hunted woman. The Department of Health sent Mallon to North Brother Island, where she was kept in isolation from 1907 to 1910, then released under the condition that she never work as a cook again. Yet for Mary—proud of her former status and passionate about cooking—the alternatives were abhorrent. She defied the edict. Bringing early-twentieth-century New York alive—the neighborhoods, the bars, the park carved out of upper Manhattan, the boat traffic, the mansions and sweatshops and emerging skyscrapers—Fever is an ambitious retelling of a forgotten life. In the imagination of Mary Beth Keane, Mary Mallon becomes a fiercely compelling, dramatic, vexing, sympathetic, uncompromising, and unforgettable heroine.

12. Snow Crash – by Neal Stephenson One of Time magazine's 100 all-time best English-language novels. Only once in a great while does a writer come along who defies comparison—a writer so original he redefines the way we look at the world. Neal Stephenson is such a writer and Snow Crash is such a novel, weaving virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility to bring us the gigathriller of the information age. In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo’sCosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he’s a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that’s striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous…you’ll recognize it immediately. From the opening line of his breakthrough cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson plunges the reader into a not-too-distant future. It is a world where the Mafia controls pizza delivery, the United States exists as a patchwork of corporate-franchise city-states, and the Internet--incarnate as the Metaverse--looks something like last year's hype would lead you to believe it should. Enter Hiro Protagonist--hacker, samurai swordsman, and pizza-delivery driver. When his best friend fries his brain on a new designer drug called Snow Crash and his beautiful, brainy ex-girlfriend asks for his help, what's a guy with a name like that to do? He rushes to the rescue. A breakneck-paced 21st-century novel, Snow Crash interweaves everything from Sumerian myth to visions of a postmodern civilization on the brink of collapse. Faster than the speed of television and a whole lot more fun, Snow Crash is the portrayal of a future that is bizarre enough to be plausible.

13. Submit your rankings here: http://hlsamp.cose.txstate.edu/scholars/science-cafe/ranking-sheet.html