Out now in paperback: Brainiac

Carl Zimmer is an excellent writer. In Soul Made Flesh (Arrow, £7.99) he is on the trail of revolutionary science. He engages from the start by conjuring up the smell of the past as he leads you by the nose from dung heap and botanist to the “freshly cracked skull” of a nobleman, the brain smelling of curds. There is a point to this stench trail. We are in 17th-century Oxford, where brain science began. How the brain was thought of changed utterly in under a century, and Zimmer is a great guide to the story.