The Barmaid's Brain is a set of 21 loosely connected essays about some of the things that we don't understand about the world around us and how scientists are trying to find explanations. The mysteries considered are not the big ones that receive the most attention, things like the origin of life or the influence of human activity on Earth's climate, but the little ones that are so familiar to us that we don't think of them as mysterious or were not even aware of in the first place. In this book, the author briefly covers investigations into such diverse questions as why we laugh, why moths fly toward light, explanations of the Salem witch trials, and bacteriophages. The essays are short which is either a strength or a weakness depending on what is desired from the book. For those who would like a brief and readable summary of the issues, the essays work well. However, if you are interested in a deeper discussion, there is not much there and the bibliography seems a bit sparse to provide much help (typically 3-4 references are cited for each essay). As might be expected from a book covering such a diverse range of topics, I found the quality of the essays to be uneven. For me, the most interesting essays covered questions I hadn't thought much about and while not providing answers, it did help me appreciate how difficult investigating those questions are. Other essays (particularly the later ones) were more a summary of knowledge rather than comparison of competing ideas. Perhaps it was a difference in expectation, but I found the essays that outlined experiments and compared hypothesis more enjoyable than the others. On the whole, the book was worth reading but it was not one of my favorites.
-Lyle Ford
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Lyle Ford
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Department of Physics and Astronomy
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Last Updated: May 13, 2004