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Valerie Thompson

Valerie Thompson, Editor

  • The Scientist and the Spy: A True Story of China, The FBI, and Industrial Espionage
    Mara Hvistendahl

    Book

    A journalist investigates a surprising act of industrial espionage

    For many of us, the idea of industrial espionage conjures up secreted factory blueprints, copied chemical formulas, and hacked computer systems. It calls to mind the high tech and highly trained, the stuff of spy novels and James Bond films. It does not evoke Iowa cornfields—at least, no more than a few scattered ears of… Read More

  • A Game of Birds and Wolves: The Young Women Who Played to Win WWII
    Simon Parkin

    Book

    A high-stakes game of battleship helped turn the tide in World War II’s Battle of the Atlantic

    In A Game of Birds and Wolves, journalist Simon Parkin reports on a long overlooked piece of World War II’s Battle of the Atlantic, focusing on a war game that helped the British counter Nazi U-boats threatening Britain’s vital sea lines. The first part of the book will be familiar to war scholars and history buffs… Read More

  • Mengele: Unmasking the “Angel of Death”
    David G. Marwell

    Book

    A U.S. Department of Justice insider’s biography reveals new details about Nazi physician Josef Mengele

    It is perhaps the most darkly iconic image of the Holocaust. A transport of Jewish prisoners arrives at Auschwitz and is ordered to divide by gender and form ranks of five. Amid the prisoners stands a man in a white coat, directing victims either to forced labor or to the gas chamber. This physician is… Read More

  • Sexual Citizens: A Landmark Study of Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus
    Jennifer S. Hirsch and Shamus Khan

    Book

    Inadequate sex education and socialization collide in college spaces that stymie consent

    Although there are variations in format and content, there are also remarkable similarities in orientation programs designed to introduce freshmen to college life. All programs instruct students on practical matters such as course scheduling, academic advising, and choosing a major. But most programs also have sessions on navigating campus life outside the classroom, with at… Read More

  • A Scheme of Heaven: The History of Astrology and the Search for our Destiny in Data
    Alexander Boxer

    Book

    Highlights from the history of astrology reveal the origins of our quest to find meaning in data

    Alexander Boxer, a professional data scientist, knows a thing or two about distilling patterns from big data. Surrounded by constant, endless streams of information, humans are pattern-matching animals, and astrology, he claims, “is the universe’s grandest pattern-matching game.” Boxer’s new book, A Scheme of Heaven, is an introduction to astrology that offers a handsome primer… Read More

  • The Evolution of Knowledge: Rethinking Science for the Anthropocene
    Jürgen Renn

    Book

    To save society, science should embrace ethical projects

    Can science save humanity? In the face of runaway climate change and massive species extinction, some say that we already know all we need to know to fix these problems: Further research is a distraction and what we need now is action. Others anticipate a feat of technical ingenuity that will catapult us out of… Read More

  • Playing Nature: Ecology in Video Games
    Alenda Y. Chang

    Book

    Video games—even those without explicit educational goals—can offer insights into ecology

    When a designer decides to turn his billion-dollar video game into an exercise in sustainable downsizing in Richard Power’s novel The Overstory, another character asks. “How are limits and shortages and permadeath going to be fun?” People playing video games want to level up and accumulate, to monetize social status and trade it. Such hypercapitalist… Read More

  • The Crowd and the Cosmos: Adventures in the Zooniverse
    Chris Lintott

    Book

    A physicist reveals how citizen science is reshaping research

    To understand how star formation varies in different galaxies, Chris Lintott and Kevin Schawinski needed to sort elliptical galaxies from spirals. But image recognition software can be costly to produce and needs training data to generate accurate results. The repository they had in mind—the Sloan Digital Sky Survey—included photometric observations of nearly one billion objects… Read More

  • Podcast

    PODCAST: Best science books, films & games of 2019

    This week on the podcast, Science‘s book and media review editor Valerie Thompson discusses books we reviewed and loved in 2019,  books we missed and wish we’d reviewed, new books for the next-generation of scientists, a few of our favorite films, and a hit board game for bird enthusiasts. Listen here. To hear the rest… Read More
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