Tag Archives: Robert Winston

Science Experiments – Ian Graham, Robert Winston ****

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This is a brilliant collection of DIY experiments for young scientists – but I had a real mental battle reviewing it. There is one thing about it I absolutely hate, for which I would give it just one star if the website’s reviewing system allowed me – but the fact is, horrible though this aspect is, it’s an excellent book and it deserves those four stars, but with a real boo hiss for the dubious behaviour of Robert Winston and the publisher as described later.

Let’s do the good part first, though. The book itself. Unlike most Dorling Kindersley publications many of the highly illustrated colourful pages are single page articles, though some stretch to a double spread. We get the whole gamut of DIY home experiments here. Some are fairly straightforward and predictable, like making water vapour or growing crystals, but others have a touch of brilliance about them in clever things I’ve never seen before. How about using a bike wheel as a centrifuge by attaching a container to the spokes? Genius!

The book is aimed at a relatively young audience, so it doesn’t have the more dramatic, exciting (and frankly dangerous) types of experiment described in The Ultimate Book of Saturday Science, but there is plenty in here to keep the most enthusiastic young scientist busy. We have chemistry, biology and physics, balloon hovercrafts and electroplating, solar ovens and metal detectors. Each of the experiments is very clearly described with the brilliant level of illustration you expect from DK. All in all an excellent essential for the young home experimenter.

So why did I get so worked up? Look at the cover. This is a book by Robert Winston. It even has his picture on the cover. Yet as I read through those experiments I thought ‘Robert Winston would not have spent his time doing this. Someone else wrote it.’ And sure enough, in small print in the acknowledgements, we see that it was actually written by Ian Graham. All Robert Winston did was write a couple of introductory paragraphs. This is absolutely shameful.

However, for Ian Graham’s sake, don’t let it put you off the book. Buy it despite Robert Winston. Because it is excellent.

Hardback:  

Review by Jo Reed

Human – Robert Winston ***

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Not really a popular science book, so we can’t give it more than three stars, but a remarkable book nonetheless.

In the classic Dorling Kindersley style this is a richly illustrated book, featuring the human animal in profuse detail. It’s a reference book really, but it’s one that it is very tempting to dip into and read more.

After an introduction and a short section on the origins of the human race there’s a big chunk (about 100 pages) dedicated to the body and how it works. A lot of this is in the classic DK style of a two page spread on each topic, though sometimes – the heart for example – it spreads to four. The pages are crammed with illustrations and relatively short chunks of separate text, which is why in the end it’s not popular science – it doesn’t read through, it’s more of a reference.

After the body, the mind, our life cycle, our society, culture and peoples finish the book (with a small section on the future).

If you want a single reference on the human being this has to be it. It’s a great book, just not really our sort of thing!

Hardback:  

Review by Peter Spitz

The Human Mind – Robert Winston ***

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While I can see why this book is titled The Human Mind, it would perhaps have been more accurate to call it The Human Brain, because a large proportion of it is spent on the actual physical lumps involved in the various thinking processes.

After covering the basics of body, brain and mind, Winston dives into the brain’s working, then pulls out a number of different aspects of the mind (or, rather brain), such as senses, emotions, learning and so on. It’s good stuff, and Winston’s style is amiable and straightforward. I very much liked his balanced and fair defence of animal experimentation, although few animal rights protesters would agree.

So the good news is that it’s a very effective, easily read book on the human brain. But there are issues – firstly that title.

What the full title (The Human Mind – and how to make the most of it) promises to me is a book that’s half on human psychology and half on how to make your mind work most effectively – a sort of British version of Pinker’s How the Mind Works. What I got was a book on brain physiology and a very tiny amount on making the most of it. That really isn’t good enough. Winston just spends too long telling us what various bits do, and how when we do this particular thing that bit of the brain is in use. I wanted to shout “So what? How does this help me make the most of my mind?” He could comfortably have cut a quarter of this book by removing unnecessary references to how a particular bit of the brain was responsible for a particular function – after a while it got very samey.

The other problem I had is just a bit of the super-trivialization of Winston’s TV shows crept in. Normally I’ve been pleasantly surprised by his books, which are much less irritating than Winston on TV, but we had to have references to, for instance, a test on the show where two groups, one holiday camp representatives, the other physics students were tested for extroversion by seeing how much sticky tape they could lick in a packing warehouse. (Apparently introverts generate more saliva.) This is just crass.

I really don’t understand how this book got onto the 2005 Aventis shortlist. Not only was it not published in the right year (it originally came out in 2003 – presumably he got special dispensation because he was an Aventis judge last year), but books like Simon Singh’s Big Bang and Brian Cathcart’s The Fly in the Cathedral, both vastly better, didn’t even make the longlist.

Paperback:  

Review by Brian Clegg

What Makes Me Me? – Robert Winston *****

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I’ll be quite honest, as a reviewer I started out with a bias against this book, because I personally find the author, Professor Robert Winston, rather condescending in his popular UK TV science shows. However, this bias could do nothing to prevent me from thinking the book is wonderful, which is a bit irritating, really.

Different sections look at “what I am made of”, “what makes me unique”, “how does my brain work”, “what kind of person am I” and a series of tests to have a go at plumbing your own memory, skills and personality. It all flows beautifully and being DK it has plenty of visual impact. The very question in the title of the book makes it so much more interesting than just yet another “how do human bodies work?” book. It’s about what makes me work, what I am and what my brain is – it’s gobsmackingly good.

Complaints? Hard to find any. Sometimes the inevitable simplification misses out one or two essential points. The two page spread headed “the ingredients” tells us we are “65% oxygen, 18% carbon” and so on, but doesn’t bother to point out that these percentages only make sense when considering weight, and there all sorts of other ways of dividing up our components. Occasionally the page heading questions don’t seem to be answered. “Your inner self seems to make all your decisions, but is it really in control?” [their bold letters] asks a page – but it’s hard to say where that question is answered anywhere on that page. And, as often happens with the DK style, there’s sometimes so much going on in a page that it becomes quite hard to read – more white space, please!

But these are minor points, because there has to be something. The fact remains this is an enviably brilliant piece of science for younger readers and Winston deserves every accolade for it.

 

Hardback:  

Review by Brian Clegg