Pseudoscience, zero waste, and female scientists save the world: Books in brief

Beloved Beasts

Michelle Nijhuis W. W. Norton (2021)

In 2019, a white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum) was born at a zoo in San Diego, California, as a result of artificial insemination. A related technique using a complex robotic catheter might lead to a free-roaming population of the northern subspecies of white rhino, which is functionally extinct. Such are the complexities of modern conservation covered in science writer Michelle Nijhuis’s thoughtful and readable history of people “who did the wrong things for the right reasons, and the right things for the wrong reasons”.

On the Fringe

Michael D. Gordin Oxford Univ. Press (2021)

All scientists agree that cold fusion, creationism and Nazi…