Permutations: Readings in Science and Literature, Joan...

Permutations: Readings in Science and Literature, Joan Digby and Bob Brier, editors (Morrow). To Edgar Allan Poe, science seemed to kill the myths, while to William Wordsworth, it was an art like poetry. While the literature inspired by astronomy, physics, chemistry and biology is voluminous, the editors are among the first to capture it in a single volume. John Donne, of course, is here, but so are surprises, such as Erica Jong’s “Half-Life”: “I invent / tidal waves, atomic shocks, / the mushroom cloud of you / above the smoking chasm / that you leave in me.” Opinions range wildly, from Mark Akenside’s conviction that science is a “foundress of order, cities, laws . . . wealth, power, freedom” to Jonathan Swift’s belief that scientists spend their lives “extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers.”

Cadillac Jack, The Desert Rose, Larry McMurtry (Touchstone). Jack scouts for antique treasures in swap meets, flea markets and small-time auctions, while Harmony, “the Desert Rose,” searches for human riches in an arid Las Vegas landscape of supermarkets, tacky casinos and second-rate men. In these two books, written in 1982 and 1983, respectively, Jack and Harmony never reach their goals. Each, however, manages to find a measure of fulfillment in the quest itself. Faced with the evanescent nature of love--whether it is directed at another person or at a Sung vase--Jack trades women just as he trades antiques. Surrounded by reckless, improvident, hopeless people, Harmony, a hearty desert flower, reveals how beauty can emerge in places it is least expected.

Why Isn’t Johnny Crying?: Coping with Depression in Children, Donald H. McKnew Jr. MD, Leon Cytryn MD, Herbert Yahraes (Norton). Criticizing the notion that serious mood disorders only strike adults, the authors present clear, practical guidelines for distinguishing between the normal and the depressed child. “Executive babies,” they write, tell caretakers how to meet their needs, while “low energy babies (may) give up hope of ever being part of another person.” Implying that the medical community doesn’t take child depression seriously, the authors forward a “selective” list of resource centers for childhood depression.

The Good High School: Portraits of Character and Culture, Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (Basic). Instead of asking “what is missing, wrong, or incomplete,” Lightfoot writes, we should focus on the dynamic ways in which successful schools cope with problems. The book offers vivid portraits of six schools, but puts forth hazy notions of what educators can do beyond striving “to be good enough.”

Killing the Hidden Waters, Charles Bowden (University of Texas). The book opens when a Papago Indian tribal chief rejects an offer by white men to build a hole in the earth that would provide water, making a 16-mile trek with ollas unnecessary. For the chief, writes Bowden, “the well lanced into the sinews that bound man to man, family to family, band to band.” The chief is the first and only hero in this book, for Bowden clearly displays annoyance toward what he sees as our collective ignorance and apathy about the destruction of water resources in the American Southwest. Bowden, who wrote this book to put scientific weight behind the chief’s opposition, succeeds in providing extensive documentation of how the petroleum industry and irrigated farms have caused aridity and disrupted the food chain of the Southwestern native peoples.

Powers of Ten: About the Relative Size of Things in the Universe, Philip and Phylis Morrison (Scientific American). Pictures on the right-hand pages range from the universe to the interior of a proton, while text and poems on the left-hand pages explain how visual perceptions have changed over history. Inspired by the films of Charles Eames, an architect who thought numbers and photographs could help explain even the most complex concepts.