8 books to give away this Christmas

Books are still excellent gifts. With any luck a free book will be read. If it is not, at least it will serve to keep the publishing and bookseller sector alive. In the worst case, they never look bad on the shelves in the living room. That is why I have been encouraged to accept The Conversation Spain’s proposal to recommend books from this platform. I want to believe that my criteria will be useful to those who want to give a Christmas present and are not entirely sure what to give. As you will see, my recommendations are informative and cover various disciplines. If you are encouraged to buy any of these books, ask for it at the nearest bookstore, please. The portal todostuslibros.com will help you find it. We need bookstores to continue to exist, they are centers of culture and life.

There is no time to read all the good that is published. I come here to read one book a week, so that, in the best of cases, I don’t have a useful reading life left for more than a thousand books, much less than the excellent and very interesting ones that will be published in that time, and there are already too many. those who wait in the stack for their turn. That is why I have as a rule, except in exceptional cases, not to read more than one popular book by the same author. This explains some absences in my list of recommendations, including some excellent books – so I know, from reliable references – written by people I admire. But I should only recommend what I have read, and I have chosen to limit recommendations to books published in 2022; otherwise the selection would have been very difficult. Order does not imply preference.

I really liked “How to understand humans?”, by Pablo Rodríguez Palenzuela, published by Next Door Publishers in their Café Cajal collection. I bought the book with some reservations because I know the subject –human nature– and it has its edges. There is a lot of commonplace, hoax and bad science about a difficult subject that, moreover, is increasingly fraught with ideology. The approach to human nature is evolutionary. The first half of the book is a short treatise on biology and human evolution. And in the second, issues such as the bases of culture, language, morality, aggressiveness, status and others are addressed. The topics are rigorously treated, the statements have the proper bibliographical support, and the author does not hesitate to show different points of view if there is no consensus in the scientific community on certain aspects. It is very well written, with clarity and a fluency that makes it easy to read. With this text I discovered an author who will bring more joy in the future.

I continue with another book from Next Door Publishers, although in this case in their Canvases and Flasks collection. It is about «Genes de colores», by Lluís Montoliu, with illustrations by Jesús Romero. Lluís is part of my circle of friends in the world of popularization, a circumstance of which I must warn, in case this fact could have influenced my judgment, although I doubt it. His book is a documented review of what is known about the biochemistry and genetics of human pigmentation and, therefore, about the color of the skin, hair and eyes. As the book is read, one discovers that there are numerous genes involved in these issues, and in complex ways, too; but the author manages so that we do not get lost on the way. There is one aspect that I do not want to leave out. Lluís is especially interested in the ethical aspects of scientific research, and in the book his concern for the ethical aspect of the subject he deals with is manifest, due to the unjustified relationship between skin color, (supposed) race and, in virtue of such, the discrimination and mistreatment to which people are subjected in many countries because of that trait. Finally, a matter not minor. Like all of the Canvases and Flasks collection, the book, the product, is impeccably made, by design, layout, illustrations and editing.

“Like the air we breathe”, by Antonio Monegal, published by Acantilado was a stroke of luck. A while in Madrid with nothing to do always ends up leading me to a bookstore. And so I found this small (by extension) great (by interest) book. The topic it deals with is reflected in the subtitle: “The sense of culture”. The author questions about the relevance and usefulness of culture; he reflects on the notion itself, on the importance of being clear about what we mean when we talk about it, and its connection with memory and identity, among many other related aspects. The reading is enlightening and helps to understand the reason for cultural policies, because the author, as the back cover says, “interprets culture as an intrinsically political activity and indissoluble from our place in the world…” For those of us who are interested in cultural facts and we ask ourselves about its function and the need for cultural policies to exist –or not–, this text is quite a finding.

I continue with Acantilado, a safe publisher. «Words from the Aegean», by Pedro Olalla, was another stroke of luck. I was drawn to this work because the Greek world has fascinated me for as long as I can remember. I loved the Greek classics in high school. As an adult, immersed in the world of science, I have been affected by what the physicist and historian of science Gerald Holton called “the Ionian spell”, that conviction of a bunch of Ionian thinkers that the universe could be explained by natural laws and that matter was made up of indivisible entities. The title evoked in me that spell that today, paradoxically, perhaps I no longer experience. The book is a delight. It consists of a series of letters that the author writes to his son while he awaits his arrival on an island in the Aegean. In them, starting from the words, their meaning and etymology, he delves into the origins of thought, sometimes reaching surprising conclusions. And it claims the role of founders of our civilization for those who inhabited the coasts and islands of the Aegean. Some phase of the work was somewhat hyperbolic to me, something that seems inevitable to me given the daring shown by the author. Of course, his statements have bibliographic support, at least to the extent that, as a layman in the matter, I can gauge. The exquisite style makes this book worth reading as much for what he says as for the way he says it.

“La lira detunada de Pitágoras”, by Almudena Martín Castro, published by Harper Collins, has been another of the great discoveries of 2022. Like Lluís Montoliu, the author has been part of my circle of friends from the world of popularization for years. years. Almudena is a physicist, pianist and has a degree in Fine Arts. She is an excellent speaker and writes wonderfully. Throughout the pages of his book, he shows the intimate relationship that mathematics and physics have had with music throughout the history of science, the way, even, in which it has influenced the development of those . But even if the previous sentence is true, it does not do justice to the background of the story that the author tells, because the idea that underlies the text –and that emerges on occasions and, above all, at the end– is that of the relationship between beauty and truth, specifically between the beauty of the theories and models of science and scientific truth. This book combines erudition, elegance and ease in equal parts.

María Martinón Torres, the author of “Homo imperfectus”, published by Destino, combines extensive training – a doctor in Medicine and Surgery, a specialist in Human Evolution and a specialist in Forensic Anthropology – with a brilliant career in international research in Paleoanthropology. This observation is not idle, because few people are more qualified, due to their training and professional practice, to write about the subject of the book. Not a few diseases, health problems or even “design” problems of human beings are the other side of our evolutionary past, the painful side. Evolution does not select traits that make us perfect, free from functional problems, or processes with deleterious effects, such as cancers or neurodegenerative diseases. On the contrary, certain adaptations have counterparts in the form of diseases. Because natural selection causes certain traits –advantageous– to spread in populations. But that leaves a wide margin for imperfection. That is what this book. Of that and of the importance that solidarity and altruism have had and still have in our species, thanks to which our lives are better despite the suffering that “design problems” can cause. María is a good reader, she loves literature, and that translates into an elegant, careful and sensitive style. Good literature, once again.

I have left the two translations of the list, both published by Captain Swing, for last. I praise the audacity of the publisher in publishing these translations, because they are adventures as risky as they are necessary. I appreciate it and I would love for the reading public to reward it. I will start with the one that has been published before in Spanish, although it is more recent

“Islands of Abandonment”, by the journalist and writer Cal Flyn, was published in English in 2021, and has been translated by Lucía Barahona. I read the original edition when it came out and found it to be one of the most captivating books I’ve read in a long time. Fate tells of thirteen places that have been abandoned by human beings. They are enclaves such as the Passaic River basin, one of the places where industrial development began in the US and has endured one of the highest levels of pollution in the world; the Chernobyl exclusion area in Ukraine, where nature flourishes after its nuclear power plant accident and subsequent abandonment by humans; or certain neighborhoods in the American city of Detroit, which have been abandoned by their inhabitants and are being occupied by plants and animals. The book, which, like the previous ones, is beautifully written, clearly illustrates two phenomena. One is the destructive potential of some of our activities. And the other is the capacity of nature to reclaim humanized environments when we abandon them, although sometimes to configure biotopes that are very different from the original ones. “Islands of abandonment” impresses, for what it tells and for how it tells it. It is very beautiful.

Last on the list is “The Weirdest People in the World” by engineer-turned-anthropologist Joseph Henrich. I learned about this researcher and author on the occasion of the publication of “The secret of our success”, a book about the keys (cultural evolution) to the success of our species that I loved. I also loved the one that concerns us today, originally published in 2020 and translated by Jesús Negro. With an impressive degree of documentation and an extension of the topics covered, Henrich defends the thesis that the people who live in the countries we call Western (The West) have developed a special psychology, some traits that differentiate us to a variable degree. those who live in other parts of the world. We are more individualistic, prosocial outside the family or tribe, non-conformist and analytical, among other attributes. The author explains to what factors he attributes this peculiarity, and what social, political and economic consequences it has had. The book is, by dimensions and scope, a Magnum Opus. No work like this can say that its conclusions are going to be imperishable, but its true value does not lie there, but in its heuristic power, in the paths it opens for research and knowledge of our species. Its wording, in the best tradition of Anglo-Saxon popularization, is very clear, and the translation is impeccable.

I could have recommended a few more books, but we don’t have all the space and time in the world. Due to the diversity and interest of the topics covered, the quality of the texts, and the rigor with which they are addressed, I have this selection for a good bet. But a bet, after all. Happy reading and happy holidays.

Juan Ignacio Perez Iglesias, Chairman of The Conversation Spain Advisory Committee. Professor of Physiology, Universidad del País Vasco / University of the Basque Country

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.