We have reached “a significant moment” in the history of mankind’s relationship with the sea, said The Economist. While populations dwindle among our four favorite types of fish—salmon, sea bass, cod, and tuna—farmed fish now accounts for about half of global fish consumption. In his “sharp and occasionally lyrical” new book, Paul Greenberg examines the histories of the fab four. He argues for embracing fish farming, and for being more appreciative of the wild fish we still have.
Sex at Dawn
by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá
(HarperCollins, $26)
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This new book about the supposed true nature of human sexuality has an agenda, said Jessa Crispin in TheSmartSet.com. Its husband-and-wife authors have scoured the worlds of biology, anthropology, and primatology with the apparent aim of proving that men need sex—“lots of it” and “with lots of different women.” They may be right that monogamy only took hold with the dawn of agriculture, but only naïveté can explain their tendency to make every premodern culture “sound like a sexy utopia.”
Voyager
by Stephen J. Pyne
(Viking, $30)
“We forget too easily” the amazing feats that have been accomplished by the two unmanned Voyager space probes that NASA launched in 1977, said Glenn Harlan Reynolds in The Wall Street Journal. These craft made close passes of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, and are still gathering data today. The story of how the project came together “is an amazing one, and Pyne tells it skillfully.” Unfortunately, his “terrific account” is buried in a book that’s twice as long as it should be.
Long for This World
by Jonathan Weiner
(Ecco, $28)
It might seem as if the last thing the world needs is “more old people sucking up resources,” said Emily Yoffe in Slate.com. But researchers who study aging have begun to make very long lives seem plausible, and this book offers a compelling tour of the science and its implications. Author Jonathan Weiner doesn’t buy into the field’s most optimistic claims, but he’s open to the idea that the damage time does to our cells is mostly preventable. He also has “a gift for making science lucid and for weaving in the perfect literary allusion.”
