Mind sharpeners

Another Brockman book? With The Third Culture only just out, and many of the authors contributing to both books, you are tempted to assume that How Things Are (Weidenfeld & Nicolsan, £18.99, ISBN 0 297 81511 3) is the remains of the book before. Not so. Billed as a toolkit for the mind, it’s a slashingly swift dash through the big questions by an impressive group of scientists. Try Daniel Dennett on how to make mistakes, and the value of doing so, or Lynn Margulis’s lyrical piece on the globules of stringy bacteria that sour milk to produce the refreshing drink kefir. And the letter by Richard Dawkins to a 10-year-old on the difference between authority, tradition and evidence is short, sharp and should be required reading – articularly useful for countering those who assert that science is just one of many narratives, forgetting that it is one of the few with a built-in reality check.