How to Make a Tornado, Edited by Mick O'Hare

This playful collection of the "strange and wonderful things that happen when scientists break free" provides an absorbing commuter read in the form of articles from New Scientist magazine, casting a light on the wackier side of science and invention, from shirts that roll up their own sleeves to bombs that give lectures on their way down.

Despite its wackiness, the book offers real science, from a blow-by-blow account of how a body shuts down as it falls off the Golden Gate Bridge to the weight of the soul at the point of death and the invention of an orgasmatron - delivering pleasure at the press of a button.