Galileo: Science, Faith, and the Catholic Church, by Guy Consolmagno (author, narrator)

Now You Know Media, Inc., January 2015

Galileo is the favorite example of how religion generally, and the Catholic Church in particular, hates science. It's trotted out as proof whenever the subject is raised.

Have you ever asked yourself why other, equally impressive, examples of the Catholic Church's hostility to science aren't also used? Yeah, it's because there aren't others. The Church learned from the Galileo mistake. It wasn't Rome that denounce Darwin's theory of evolution. It was some Protestant churches that were scandalized by it. The first pope to speak about evolution was Pius XII, in 1950. He said that there wasn't enough evidence yet to accept it as a proven doctrine, but there was nothing in it that inherently contradicted Catholic doctrine. The Catholic Church has never favored strictly literal reading of the Bible, including Genesis, and this makes flexibility of mind on certain scientific issues and how they interact with faith rather easier.

The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times, by Adrienne Mayor (author), Donna Postel (narrator)

Tantor Media, ISBN 9781705276761, February 2021 (original publication April 2000)

I'm not sure it should really surprise me, but the Greeks, Romans, and other ancient cultures did a fair amount of paleontology.

Now, they didn't have our dating techniques, so while they had a good sense that Earth was old, and that the bones they found were from creatures that existed before us and were now gone, they had no idea how old, and didn't necessarily have a good sense of what came before what.

They also couldn't reliably tell what bones belonged with which other bones in the more jumbled and confused fossil sites. Earthquakes exposed a lot of fossils, but also jumbled them together.

Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past, by David Reich (author), John Lescault (narrator)

Blackstone Publishing, ISBN 9781982541286, June 2018

This is the least satisfying of the books I've read/listened to about genetics and the history of human evolution.

In many ways it's excellent. Reich is voracious in absorbing and telling us about other people's research as well as his own. His ego isn't tied up in his own theories; he's enthusiastic in reporting on research results that overturn his own theories and prior work. In many ways, it's both informative and enjoyable.

And yet. Reich seems utterly unaware that he has any biases. He says he's arguing against racism, being very clear that our traditional ideas about race just have no basis in science. Then he goes on to say that the best way to study human genetics is by large population groups, and that some large modern population groups have been separated long enough for significant differences of cognition and temperament to exist.

About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks, by David Rooney (author, narrator)

Recorded Books, ISBN 9781705051788, October 2021

This is a history, not of time, but of timekeeping and clocks, and how clocks have changed our lives.

Rooney grew up with parents who were clockmakers, and pursued a career in the maintenance and history of technology generally and clocks in particular, and is a former curator of timekeeping at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich.

He's also very focused on how clocks and timekeeping have been politicized and weaponized. Sometimes this can be annoying; sometimes it's just weirdly ironic. He offers us at the start the story of KAL Flight 007, the Korean commercial airliner shot down after entering Soviet airspace on September 1, 1983.

Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas, by Jennifer Raff (author, narrator), Tanis Parenteau (narrator)

Twelve Books, ISBN 9781549148385, February 2022

The peopling of the Americas, the arrival here of anatomically modern humans, and their development  into the peoples I was originally taught to call American Indians and a little later Native Americans, is far more complicated than I was taught in school. It's pretty clear at this point that humans didn't first arrive here a mere ten to twelve thousand years ago. It also appears clear, based on genetic evidence, that they arrived in more than one wave.

And beyond that, it's really, really complicated. The reasons for the complexities are partly the fact that it's very difficult to recover ancient DNA, especially from bones that were buried in warm, wet environments. We also don't have a lot of tools much older than 12 to 15 thousand years ago that are clearly human-made tools. Some, but not enormous numbers.

The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power, by Deirdre Mask (author), Janina Edwards (narrator)

Brilliance Audio, ISBN 9781799751786, April 2020

This is a fascinating examination of the history and development of a mundane fact of everyday life--addresses. We all have addresses; how else would we get our mail or tell people where we live?

Except we don’t all have addresses, and it's not just the homeless who lack them. In large parts of the world, including rural areas of the US, poorer and less privileged areas don't have street names and house numbers. That lack creates problems not just in telling potential visitors where you live, but in getting mail, applying for jobs, registering to vote, and qualifying for aid such as unemployment benefits. Or getting an ambulance to your house in an emergency. 

The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World, by Andrea Wulf (author), David Drummond (narrator)

Highbridge Audio, October 2015

This is a fascinating biography of an impressive scientist, whom I don't believe I ever heard of before.

Alexander von Humboldt was the second son of an aristocratic Prussian family, who used his inheritance to pursue a career as, essentially, the first real naturalist. At 27, he went on an expedition to South America, with one other scientist and a couple of guides. In the course of his expedition he invented the concept of isotherms, which made global study of climate possible. He collected specimens, climbed mountains, and took detailed notes on plant and animal life, climate, and the effects of wholesale clearing of trees and other inconvenient plants and animals. Humboldt's journey, and his letters reporting home on it, were widely covered in the newspapers, worldwide, not just in his native Prussia. He returned home, and continued to be both a celebrity and a working scientist--and in many was perhaps the first science popularizer. 

Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus (The Hinges of History #3), by Thomas Cahill (author), Brian F. O'Byrne (narrator)

Random House Audio, July 2000

Between 1995 and 2013, Thomas Cahill released a series of books called The Hinges of History, about, as one might guess, critical turning points the history of western civilization. This book, the third in the series, is about the impact Jesus, his teachings, and his followers had on history.

The Bronze Lie: Shattering the Myth of Spartan Warrior Supremacy, by Myke Cole

Osprey Publishing, February 2021

Myke Cole sets out to deconstruct the myth of Spartan warrior supremacy, not out of hostility to the Spartans, but frustration with the mythologizing of these very real people who had gifts and virtues, but also flaws. Another significant motivation is the misuse of the myth rather than the reality of the Spartans in support of hard right ideologies, and not just in the US, but at least throughout the cultural West.

The Spartans are revered and nearly worshipped as the ideal warriors, men who valued war, despised money, and served the good of the state over personal reputation and comfort. What Myke Cole shows us, in this careful, well-researched, and very readable book, is a culture of men as variable and human as any others. They were in some ways better soldiers than others contemporary to them. The Spartan hoplites did some regular training. It was more than most other Greek city-states did, but nothing close to the professionalism attributed to them by myth. It did give them a degree of organization and discipline that was, for most of their history, rare in the armies of other contemporary armies. That was a real advantage, especially when fighting other Greek hoplites.

A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes, by Adam Rutherford (author, narrator)

Tantor Audio, September 2018

Adam Rutherford gives us a fascinating tour of what genetics tells us about the history of our species, including the close relatives with whom we interbred, the Neanderthals and Denisovans.

New discoveries show the first H. Sapiens left Africa even earlier than we previously thought, and didn't always take the paths we assumed. Our DNA tells us a great deal about ourselves as a species, but not nearly as much as we like to imagine about ourselves. There just isn't that much diversity in the genome of H. Sapiens, and most of what there is, is among the peoples of Africa. The rest of us haven't been gone from Africa long enough, or separated from each other long enough, to produce that much genetic variation.

Four Lost Cities A Secret History of the Urban Age, by Annalee Newitz (author), Chloe Cannon (narrator)

Highbridge, February 2021

The allure of "lost cities" is a strong one; many of us love the story of one lost city or another. Annalee Newitz gives us the stories of four of them--Çatalhöyük, a Neolithic site in Turkey; Pompeii, on the Italian coast and the slope of Mt. Vesuvius; medieval Angkor in Cambodia; Cahokia, an indigenous North American metropolis at the site that's now East St. Louis.

Newitz looks at each of these cities using new developments and techniques in archaeology to consider the cities and their culture through the lives of the average residents as well as the elites.

The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, The Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World, by Edward Dolnick (author), Alan Sklar (narrator)

 Audible Studios, February 2011

This is a lively and entertaining history of science in the 17th century, and the birth of the science that helped make the modern world. He gives us a history of the birth of modern mathematics and the science it enabled, including, but not only, modern astronomy. It's filled with not just the achievements but the personalities of Kepler, Galileo, Tycho, Leibnitz, Newton, Halley, and others. Both the achievements and the e egotistical silliness are on display here.

Unfortunately, Dolnick seems to be a better science writer than a historian. He speaks of these men having been born in a medieval world of faith, revealed truth, and predestination as if the preceding century of the had never happened. 

The History of Bourbon (Great Courses), by Ken Albala

Audible Originals, December 2019

This is a lively and interesting history of bourbon, starting with human discovery of alcohol, and why it made nutrtional and economic sense to turn a good proportion of your grain into alcoholic beverages.

Eventually, we get to the invention of whiskey, its medicinal uses, and its evolution into a recreational drug. It was not to completely lose its medicinal uses, however, till the 20th century.

Finally, we get to the invention of bourbon in the late 1700s, by--someone. Someone in the new United States of America, probably in Kentucky. From there we get the sruggles over what is bourbon, should we have any pure food and drug laws (really; whiskey and bourbon were a significant factor in this), etc.

The Life and Times of Prince Albert, by Patrick Allit (author, narrator)

Audible Originals & The Great Courses, February 2020

Prince Albert was the younger son of a fairly minor German prince, and he married the queen of one of the great powers of Europe. They were each among a very short list of eligible marriage partners for each other. That it was a love match was a bonus extra for them.

This isn't a biography of Victoria, or even of Victoria and Albert. This is specifically about Albert, his lie and times, and his unexpected and significant influence on British politics and culture.

Victoria and Albert were both twenty when they married, intelligent, and energetic. However, Albert had received a much better education. This was partly because young men were deemed to be more suited for education than young women, but also because Victoria's mother, the Duchess of Kent, and the Duchess's lover, Sir John Conroy, were trying to mold Victoria into someone they could easily control. They weren't successful, but that didn't change Victoria's lack of education.

Medieval Myths & Mysteries (The Great Courses), by Dorsey Armstrong (author, narrator)

Audible Originals, September 2019

This is a great set of lectures about medieval Europe and what many of us think we know that just wasn't so. We get lively accounts of King Arthur (almost certainly real, though not called either "King" or "Arthur"), and Robin Hood. We learn about the Knights Templar and the origins of a very popular modern conspiracy theory, and what the medieval Europeans did and didn't know about the physical world.

Medieval bestiaries and real or fanciful travelogues, and a really interesting suggestion for the possible origin of the Questing Beast add a lot of fun to the listening. And Armstrong finishes up with a look how George R.R. Martin drew on medieval history to make A Song of Ice and Fire/The Game of Thrones a rich and fascinating story.

It's entertaining, informative, and fun.

Recommended.

I got this from Audible's expanded May selection of free Audible Originals, and am reviewing it voluntarily.

The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, by Deborah Blum (author), Kristen Potter (narrator)

Penguin Audio, ISBN 9780525639893, September 2018

This is the fascinating, alarming, and encouraging story of the first great round in the fight for food safety in the USA.

In the second half of the 19th century, the food industry embraced the chemical industry, and preservatives, colorants, and substitutions became common. This might not sound all that alarming, as all those terms apply to things legitimately used in food now. However, at that time, milk could contain formaldehyde, jellies and jams might contain none of the claimed fruit at all and get their color from coal tar dyes, and there were no labeling requirements at all. Basic food safety legislation was making progress in Europe, but was completely squelched by industry efforts in America.

The Half-Life of Marie Curie, by Lauren Gunderson (author), Kate Mulgrew (narrator), Francesca Faridany (narrator)

Audible Audio, December 2019

Marie Curie was a scientist of tremendous accomplishments at a time when it was much harder than now for women to have careers in science at all. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and the person, and one of only two to this point, to win two Nobels in different scientific fields. Her 1903 Nobel, with her husband Pierre, and Henri Becquerel, was in physics. Pierre Curie died in a road accident in 1906, and Marie Curie continued her research alone. In 1911, she won a second Nobel, in chemistry. That happened in the midst of a huge scandal over her affair with Paul Langevin, a married man estranged from his wife.

Crime in Progress: Inside the Steele Dossier and the Fusion GPS Investigation of Donald Trump by Glenn Simpson (author), Peter Fritsch (author), Mark Deakins (narrator)

Random House Audio, November 2019

In 2010, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, two former Wall Street Journal reporters, left the news business and founded Fusion GPS, to do research mostly for businesses and law firms, and occasionally opposition research for political campaigns.

In 2015, they were hired to do opposition research on Donald Trump.

What started as an investigation of Trump's tangled business dealings became ever more intertwined in previous investigations into Russian corruption, as they realized that investigating Trump meant investigating his Russian associations and business dealings.

Frankie: The Woman Who Saved Millions from Thalidomide, by James Essinger & Sandra Koutzenko

The History Press, ISBN 9780750991919, June 2019

Dr. Frances Oldham "Frankie" Kelsey was a pharmacologist and physician who for many years worked in the New Drug Division of the US Food & Drug Administration. Born in Canada in 1914, she was graduating from college in the midst of the Great Depression, and getting a master's degree seemed a better choice than standing in bread lines. A year later, she faced the same choice, and went on to get her Ph.D. in pharmacology--and in the process connected with a professor who encouraged her, pointed her in new directions, and crucially, when the time came, connected her with an opportunity in the US. That embarked her on a path that led to her meeting her husband, Fremont Ellis Kelsey, also a Ph.D. in pharmacology, getting her M.D., and ultimately becoming a medical officer at the FDA.

So why do we care about a "faceless bureaucrat"?

Because Frankie Kelsey is the "faceless bureaucrat who looked at the NDA (New Drug Application) for thalidomide, and started asking questions and insisting on real answers.

Charles and Ada: The Computer's Most Passionate Partnership, by James Essinger

The History Press, ISBN 9780750990950, February 2020

While this is presented as a biography of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, his professional partner and collaborator, it's mostly about Babbage. One gets pretty far in before there's much about Ada Lovelace.

It's true that there was a considerable difference in their ages, and they met when he was a widower in his thirties and she was nineteen. By the time he met Ada Byron, later Ada Lovelace, he had built a working 1/7 prototype of the Difference Engine. After they met, they quickly became friends, based in their shared love of science and mathematics, and more gradually, dedicated professional partners. Ada Lovelace became an essential part of his work on the Difference Engine 2 and the Analytical Engine. But really, this book is mostly about Charles Babbage.

That said, it's a very interesting account of both the roots and the development of Babbage's ideas, including the seemingly unexpected role played by advances in weaving, most importantly, the development of the Jacquard loom, producing intricate and beautiful designs by means of punchcards.