Also of interest ... hidden talents and heightened senses

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by Colin Ellard

(Doubleday, $25)

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This “mind-expanding book” makes you feel embarrassed about human spatial intelligence, said Susan Salter Reynolds in the Los Angeles Times. There’s no excuse for getting lost in the mall once you learn how ants, pigeons, and bats face far more challenging tests. But neuroscientist Colin Ellard is also interested in exploring how our shriveling navigational talents affect the world we build. New ideas spill from each page “like winnings from a slot machine.”

A Brain Wider Than the Sky

by Andrew Levy

(Simon & Schuster, $25)

Andrew Levy’s new memoir is “a tonic of a book with a terrible title,” said Karen R. Long in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Anyone who foists upon the world nearly 300 pages about migraine pain “had ­better write like an angel,” and Levy does. When a headache of biblical proportions downs the author for a year and a half, he decides to learn all he can, even from such past “migrainers” as Emily Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson. He transforms his suffering into an intellectual tour that “fascinates.”

The Third Man Factor

by John Geiger

(Weinstein, $24.95)

John Geiger’s new book “could have been twice as good and half as long,” said Roger Cox in the Edinburgh Scotsman. Exploring why mountain climbers and other individuals placed in extreme peril often sense the presence of a benevolent companion, the American journalist offers several interesting theories. But by crowding his pages with anecdotes that all have the same plot line, he has taken hair-raising stories of human endurance and “rendered them spirit-crushingly dull.”

Perfecting Sound Forever

by Greg Milner

(Faber & Faber, $35)

“Unapologetic sound geek” Greg Milner has found “a compelling adventure story” in the history of audio recording, said Norman Lebrecht in The Wall Street Journal. Its Moses is phonograph inventor Thomas Edison, who clung to the ideal of perfecting sound fidelity, even as relatively inexpensive gramophone discs stole his market. “There are no heroes” in Milner’s account of the post-1978 digital era, though. According to Milner, bland, dishonest reproduction is all we can hope for from our iPods.