Annal:2006 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science & Technology

From AwardAnnals

Jump to: navigation, search

Results of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the year 2006. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:

In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind

Eric R. Kandel

In Search of Memory relates the astonishing story of how four different and distinct disciplines—behaviorist psychology, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and molecular biology—converged into a powerful new science of mind. Through its profound insights into thought, perception, action, recollection, and mental illness, this new science is revolutionizing our understanding of learning and memory while simultaneously showing great promise for more effective healing.

 

The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth

Edward O. Wilson

In this daring work, Edward O. Wilson proposes an alliance between science and religion to save Earth’s vanishing biodiversity. It is his most important work since the publications of Sociobiology and Biophilia. Like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, it is a book about the fate of the earth and the survival of our planet. Yet while Carson was specifically concerned with insecticides and the ecological destruction of our natural resources, Wilson, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner, attempts his new social revolution by bridging the seemingly irreconcilable worlds of fundamentalism and science. Like Carson, Wilson passionately concerned about the state of the world, draws on his own personal experiences and expertise as an entomologist, and prophesies that half the species of plants and animals on Earth could either have gone or at least are fated for early extinction by the end of our present century.

 

The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors

Ann Gibbons

The quest to find where and when the earliest human ancestors first appeared is one of the most exciting and challenging of all scientific pursuits. The First Human is the story of four international teams obsessed with solving the mystery of human evolution and of the intense rivalries that propel them.

Ann Gibbons introduces the various maverick fossil hunters and describes their most significant discoveries in Africa. Through scrupulous research and vivid first-person reporting, The First Human takes readers behind the scenes to reveal the intense challenges of fossil hunting on a grand competitive scale.

 

The First Scientific American: Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius

Joyce Chaplin

Famous, fascinating Benjamin Franklin-he would be neither without his accomplishments in science. In this authoritative intellectual biography of America’s most brilliant and cosmopolitan Founding Father, Joyce Chaplin considers Franklin’s scientific work as a career in its own right as well as the basis of his political thought. The famous kite and other experiments with electricity were only part of Franklin’s accomplishments. He charted the Gulf Stream, made important observations in meteorology, and used the burgeoning science of “political arithmetic” to make unprecedented statements about America’s power. Even as he stepped onto the world stage as an illustrious statesman and diplomat in the years leading up to the American Revolution, his fascination with nature was unrelenting.

 

This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

Daniel J. Levitin

Whether you load your iPod with Bach or Bono, music has a significant role in your life——even if you never realized it. Why does music evoke such powerful moods? The answers are at last becoming clear, thanks to revolutionary neuroscience and the emerging field of evolutionary psychology. Both a cutting-edge study and a tribute to the beauty of music itself, This Is Your Brain on Music unravels a host of mysteries that affect everything from pop culture to our understanding of human nature.

 
Retrieved from "http://www.awardannals.com/wiki/Annal:2006_Los_Angeles_Times_Book_Prize_for_Science_%26_Technology"
Personal tools