THERE is a fine line between a tease and a lie on a book cover. Take Paul Davies鈥檚 How to Build a Time Machine (Penguin, 拢6.99). He doesn鈥檛 tell us any such thing, of course. But his lucid discussion of wormholes edges us down the road to time travel. So we鈥檒l let him off. But Caroline Bledsoe鈥檚 Contingent Lives: Fertility, time and aging in West Africa (University of Chicago Press, $22) simply does not fulfil its promise to tell us how women in Gambia 鈥渦se contraceptives to have as many children as possible鈥�. Stripped of some academic mumbo-jumbo, she shows how, like the rest of us, they use contraceptives to manage when they have children. Thumbs down.
Randal Keynes鈥檚 Annie鈥檚 Box (Fourth Estate, 拢8.99) offers 鈥渢he story of a personal tragedy that lay behind Charles Darwin鈥檚 revolutionary understanding of man鈥檚 place in nature鈥�. I had my doubts. The death of Darwin鈥檚 young daughter 鈥� whose trinkets have been preserved in her writing box 鈥� may not be the origin of his ideas on evolution. But this tender and compelling story shows that it forged his convictions about nature鈥檚 cruelty, and steeled him to write his great work. Tellingly, too, after Annie鈥檚 death he never again attended church with his family.
No hype is needed for Martin Meredith鈥檚 history of humanity鈥檚 assault on our largest land mammal (Africa鈥檚 Elephant, Sceptre, 拢7.99). Nor for Evelyn Fox Keller鈥檚 brief but magisterial The Century of the Gene (Harvard, 拢10.50). Beginning in 1909, when the word was coined to describe an abstract idea, it charts the gene鈥檚 eventual discovery and exploitation, but also our confusion about the still-mysterious blueprints of life.
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There鈥檚 more conventional storytelling in Brenda Fowler鈥檚 breathless Iceman (Pan, 拢7.99), about the prehistoric corpse found in an Alpine glacier 11 years ago. 脰tzi is a real time traveller. And no wormholes needed.
Late arrivals include Urban Rivers: Our inheritance and future, edited by Geoff Petts, John Heathcote and Dave Martin (IWA, 拢20). A harrowing account of damage done to waterways in cities and towns, it has a crop of suggestions to repair the harm. Or escape to the future with Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter鈥檚 The Light of Other Days (HarperCollins, 拢6.99). Privacy shattered by wormholes harnessed as news snoops, asteroid heading for Earth, time travel 鈥� an engaging, unpredictable mix.