Okay, class, here are a few more summer-reading books you might want to check out.
Please bear with me; I’m a middle manager in a TV network — this is my best opportunity to prove to a large number of people that I can actually read. Sorry I didn’t include any links here — it’s probably inappropriate for us to favor one bookselling site over another. But if you’re interested, you can figure it out……..

We all have a nose, and know how to use it. The study of how we go about that, however, is not too sophisticated. What the Nose Knows, by Avery Gilbert is a great book on an overlooked topic. Want to know how smell works? Where it played a big role in pop culture or history? How industries and marketers have co-opted and synthesized smells for their own purposes? How ’bout the chemical structure of those less pleasant smells we all encounter, or emit? Well, you should get a whiff of this book, then. Gilbert combines a scientist’s sense of wonder, a scent-making professional’s sensibility, and a slightly Beavis + Butt-Head -like fascination with aroma.

Charlatan, by Pope Brock: Dr. John R. Brinkley was seen as a savior of marriages and an author of modern medical marvels. For a fee, he helped countless men roar during the 1920’s — by installing a booster set of goat testicles in them. Many thought it restored virility, despite a total lack of evidence. Many didn’t survive the operation. Brock writes with a flair, describing the mood of heartland America back then, and recounting the work of Brinkley’s nemesis, master fraudbuster Morris Fishbein. It’s a great parable for how gullible we can be, told with a sense of irony that’s probably essential when your subject matter is swindling people through the use of goat testicles.

The Dumbest Generation Mark Bauerlein is an Emory University English professor and former researcher at the National Endowment for the Arts. He makes the case that video games, text messaging, cellphones, and all the trappings of 21st Century communication have turned our children into shallow morons with tiny attention spans. But Bauerlein falls well short of making a complete sale on this. He deftly uses stats and studies to track the inability of young folks to identify, for example, the three branches of government. He also does a good job of tracking how analytical skills have fallen by the wayside, since we have so many electronic devices to do our thinking for us. What’s missing are the benefits — both real and potential — of the wealth of information we have here in the Information Age: How it’s used, and how it could be leveraged better. Bauerlein points out the popularity of games that seem to have no moral compass whatsoever, like Grand Theft Auto, without acknowledging that many other games help with everything from motor skills to organizational skills.

Peter Dykstra Executive Producer, CNN Science, Tech & Weather

Here are a few of my favorite books on hurricanes for your summer reading pleasure. You might want to crack one of these open on the beach — assuming the beach isn’t being evacuated for a hurricane.  None of these are new releases, but they’re all keepers.

“Path of Destruction: The Devastation of New Orleans and the Coming Age of Superstorms,” by Mark Schleifstein and John McQuaid. These two journalists from the New Orleans Times-Picayune probably did their most important reporting on Hurricane Katrina more than two years before the storm wiped out much of their city. While they do an outstanding job of chronicling the way that the disaster was managed — and mis-managed, Schleifstein and McQuaid wrote an extensive series for their paper in 2002. “Washing Away” served as a full preview of what Katrina would do two years later.

“Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming” by Chris Mooney stakes out the sides in one of the most active scientific debates in climate science. Was Katrina and the rest of the hellacious 2005 hurricane season a herald of global warming? Or part of a natural cycle? Mooney looks beyond the ideological polemics and profiles the scientists on both side.

“The Great Hurricane of 1938″ by Cherie Burns is a quick, compelling read on what a killer storm can do to the Northeast. The ‘38 storm tore through Long Island and Connecticut, wiped out a sandspit resort community in Rhode Island, then sent a wall of water through the streets of Providence, killing 700 along the way. Some say we’re overdue for another one — and this book may be the blueprint.

And the one, unlike “The Perfect Storm,” that is still waiting to be made into a major motion picture: “Isaac’s Storm,” Erik Larson’s recounting of the 1900 hurricane that leveled Galveston, Texas and claimed over 6,000 lives. Larson’s tale of the utter chaos and misery in the wake of the storm is made even sadder by the backwardness of the U.S. Weather Bureau, which ignored storm warnings posted by the Cuban weather service.

Peter Dykstra Executive Producer CNN Science, Tech & Weather