Produktdetaljer
Biographical note
Philip Ball is a freelance writer and broadcaster, and was an editor at Nature for more than twenty years. He writes regularly in the scientific and popular media and has written many books on the interactions of the sciences, the arts, and wider culture. His book Critical Mass won the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books. Ball is also a presenter of Science Stories, the BBC Radio 4 series on the history of science. He trained as a chemist at the University of Oxford and as a physicist at the University of Bristol. He is the author of The Modern Myths, The Book of Minds, and How Life Works. He lives in London.Ball is a terrific writer . . . An essential primer in our never-ending quest to understand life
- Adam Rutherford, <i>The Guardian</i>,
Ball is a ferociously gifted science writer . . . There is so much [here] that is amazing . . . urgent . . . astonishing
The Sunday Times
Ambitious and eye-opening
Financial Times
The best biology book I've ever read
- Brian Clegg, <i>Popular Science</i>,
A mind-stretching book . . . Ball is a clarifier supreme. It is hard to imagine a more concise, coherent, if also challenging, single volume written on the discoveries made in the life sciences over the past 70 years
The Spectator
Full of fascinating information . . . The dedicated reader will come away with many novel insights and a new perspective on what makes life special
The Times Literary Supplement
Lucid . . . suggests that before they can understand what really comprises life, biologists have first to unlearn a great deal of what they think they know
New Statesman
Well researched, interesting, and stimulating
Science
Ball deftly explains how it’s possible to follow, in exquisite detail, how cells develop and specialise to form an organism. We are revising life constantly, and Ball’s account of synthetic biology takes us to this exciting frontier
Prospect
A must-read user's guide for biologists and non-biologists alike . . . It's time to stop pretending that, give or take a few bits and pieces, we know how life works. Instead, we must let our ideas evolve as more discoveries are made in the coming decades
- Denis Noble, <i>Nature</i>,
Ball’s marvelous book is both wide-ranging and deep . . . <i>How Life Works</i> has exciting implications for the future of the science of biology itself. I could not put it down
- Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of <i>The Emperor of All Maladies</i>, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction,
Ball has the rare ability to explain scientific concepts across very diverse disciplines. . . . He explains the turn away from a purely mechanical view of life to one that embraces the inherently dynamic, complex, multilayered, interactive, and cognitive nature of the processes by which life sustains and regenerates itself
- James Shapiro, author of <i>Evolution</i>,
Offers a much-needed examination of exciting, cutting-edge findings in contemporary biology that is likely to dramatically transform our understanding of living systems
- Daniel J. Nicholson, coeditor of <i>Everything Flows</i>,
Ball takes glee in tearing down scientific shibboleths . . . and his penetrating analysis underscores the stakes of outdated assumptions. . . . Provocative and profound, this has the power to change how readers understand life’s most basic mechanisms
Publishers Weekly
In showing that complex life is more 'emergent' than 'programmed,' Ball takes on many conventional notions about biology . . . Offers plenty of food for thought for scientists in disciplines from medicine to engineering
- <i>Kirkus Reviews</i>, starred review,