Science books: Words of wisdom

ONE IN THREE
Adam Wishart (Profile Books, £15 hardback)

Cancer will get one in three of us at some time in our lives. It is, of course, a devastating illness, as Adam Wishart knows full well from the experiences of his father. This is his very personal journey as he describes the moment when his father was diagnosed, the treatments he received and the setbacks he suffered. At the same time, Wishart manages to broaden the topic to include digressions on some of the leading characters, and the advances, in the scientific fight against cancer.

Professor Karol Sikora, a leading cancer specialist, says this book is very different from the welter of personal self-help tomes. "This is not one of such; it stands out as being an intelligent, balanced review of a complex and emotive subject," he writes on the dust jacket.

STUMBLING ON HAPPINESS
Daniel Gilbert (Harper Perennial, £8.99 paperback)

If you want to be happy, healthy, wealthy and wise, then skip the vitamin pills, the holidays in the sun and the plastic surgery, says psychologist Daniel Gilbert. Instead, go in for public humiliation, unjust imprisonment and spinal injury leading to quadriplegia.

Confused? The point Gilbert makes is that human happiness is something we all want, yet it is not always attained by the usual routes of healthy prosperity surrounded by loved ones. There are other, more complex, factors in the equation, which makes the human condition so difficult to dissect.

People who suffer really traumatic events in their lives often say they have come out of it a better and happier person. They learn to appreciate themselves and those around them. So there is no perfect, simple equation for happiness; it is something that you can almost stumble across.

LONESOME GEORGE, THE LIFE AND LOVES OF A CONSERVATION ICON
By Henry Nicholls (Pan Books, £16.99 hardback)

He is 5ft long, weighs 200lbs and is anywhere between 60 and 200 years old. Lonesome George is a giant tortoise from the Galapagos Islands and a conservation icon because he is the last remaining member of the species that once thrived on the northern island of Pinta before his like were eaten by sailors and pickled by scientists.

If any of the shortlisted books should win the prize for storytelling, it is this one. It is the first book by Nicholls, who is surely set to become an author of many more fascinating science books. In many ways, this book is what good science writing is all about - explanation through a ripping narrative. George was picked up on Pinta in 1972, a lone male in a fruitless search for a mate. For the past few years, he has been kept in captivity on another island and news this week is that there is hope that a genetically suitable female may be found among giant tortoises on other islands. Even so, the outlook is bleak.

THE ROUGH GUIDE TO CLIMATE CHANGE
Robert Henson (Penguin, £9.99 paperback)

This offers an overview of the symptoms, the science, the debates and the solutions to climate change. It is a book for dipping in and out of, rather than a continuous read. Henson is a leading US climate scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and what he says has the stamp of authority you may not necessarily get from an avowed environmental activist. Henson punctuates his book with little asides, such as a pen portrait of Jim Lovelock, the inventor of the Gaia theory, to an explanation of the Little Ice Age when frost fairs were held on the River Thames.

IN SEARCH OF MEMORY. THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW SCIENCE OF MIND
By Eric Kandel (W.W. Norton, £10.99 paperback)

One of the most curious things about the brain is that all its cells and chemicals are replaced many times over during a lifetime yet we can still remember events that happened in childhood. How can memory work when the machinery of the mind is in a state of constant flux?

Eric Kandel, a veteran neuroscientist and winner of the Nobel Prize, leads us tentatively to some possible answers with this account of his life and work. He covers a period of more than half a century from his childhood in Nazi-occupied Vienna to receiving his Nobel Prize for medicine in Stockholm in 2000. This book is a first-person account by someone at the forefront of his field.

HOMO BRITANNICUS: THE INCREDIBLE STORY OF HUMAN LIFE IN BRITAIN
Chris Stringer (Penguin, £25 hardback)

The story of how humans have lived - and died - in the British Isles has never really been told in a popular format. Stringer, the head of human origins at the Natural History Museum, makes a brave attempt to fill in many of the knowledge gaps.

The first humans arrived in Britain at least 700,000 years ago, but whoever they were, they did not survive the changing semi-tropical climate and disappeared. It seems humans colonised and abandoned Britain on at least seven occasions as ice ages turned the landscape into a glacial desert. Land bridges between Britain and the continent were formed and lost.

The latest "interglacial" period began about 14,000 years ago, and Britain has been continuously inhabited only since that time. Stringer covers much ground, from the Victorian geologists who mapped out Britain's rock formations to the Piltdown hoax. The book is a tour de force by a scientist who, as leader of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project, has been in a prime position to describe the big picture of British life.

The winner of the £10,000 Royal Society Prize for Science Books is announced on 15 May. To order any of these books with a 10 per cent discount and free P&P, call Independent Books Direct on 0870 079 8897