I’ve been read­ing some great books recent­ly.

A Nuclear Fam­i­ly Vaca­tion: Trav­els in the World of Atom­ic Weapon­ry (Blooms­bury) is by Nathan Hodge and Sharon Wein­berg­er, a hus­band-and-wife team of US defence reporters turned nuclear tourists. Rather than relax­ing on the Flori­da beach for their hol­i­days they trav­elled the world in search of nuclear sites. It’s an enter­tain­ing and infor­ma­tive read with an impor­tant con­clu­sion. The whole “nuclear weapons com­plex”, cost­ing bil­lions of dol­lars a year, is an enter­prise that has “lost its way”. Accord­ing to Hodge and Wein­berg­er, it may be time for the US to think the unthink­able and “explore prac­ti­cal options for elim­i­nat­ing the nuclear arse­nal”. Read more in my review for the Guardian.

Also in the Guardian are a cou­ple of paper­back reviews.  Fol­low the Water: Explor­ing the Sea to Dis­cov­er Cli­mate (Basic Books) is an excel­lent intro­duc­tion to oceanog­ra­phy by nov­el­ist and keen sailor Dal­las Mur­phy. At near­ly 900 pages, Cos­mos: An Illus­trat­ed His­to­ry of Astron­o­my and Cos­mol­o­gy by John North (Chica­go) is a suit­ably mon­u­men­tal book about the biggest sub­ject of all. First pub­lished in 1993 and now updat­ed and reis­sued with many beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions, this is a defin­i­tive his­to­ry of our love affair with the stars.

Last but by no means least — because believe it or not this book is actu­al­ly big­ger than Cos­mos — is the Cham­bers Dic­tio­nary of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy (Cham­bers). At over 1370 pages and a full 7 cm thick, this weighty tome is a must-have addi­tion to the library of any sci­ence buff, fact check­er, word lover, or wannabe con­tes­tant of Uni­ver­si­ty Chal­lenge. Read my full review, intrigu­ing­ly titled “Shish-kebab with a spud”, in this week’s Times Lit­er­ary Sup­ple­ment (August 15, 2008).