Book description
This entertaining and informative book describes how living things bump up against non-biological reality. "My immodest aim," says the author, "is to change how you view your immediate surroundings." He asks us to wonder about the design of plants and animals around us: why a fish swims more rapidly than…
Why read it?
1 author picked Life's Devices as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I started out as a fairly standard physicist, working with magnets, nanocrystals, and other inert “stuff.” I ended up a biophysicist, studying living things through a physical lens. A bit like Dorothy in Oz, I found myself in a world with amazing vibrancy and variety but still with many echoes of familiar past experiences.
There wasn’t a single tornado that took me to the Oz of biophysics but several, one of which was this book. Vogel describes the challenges of living in the physical world and nature’s ingenious schemes for meeting these challenges. We learn how prairie dogs keep from…
From Raghuveer's list on The best books for stretching your conception of biology.
If you love Life's Devices...
December on 5C4
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
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