Consider everything you do in 24 hours. Now consider doing it without gravity. Roach’s new book explores just that, unveiling the “man” in “manned space exploration.” She’s not interested in heroes, but in humans — the dirty, hungry, sleep- and stimulus-deprived souls shot into the isolation of space, and the scientists who test every contingency to put them there. The resulting tale is a humorous and irreverent look at the innards of space travel. Take the Apollo 12 astronauts, who were so plagued by sharp, clingy moon-dust particles that they took off their long johns... (p. 30)

Numberland is a topsy-turvy place. In his new book, Bellos follows math’s counterintuitive twists and turns with the surprise and delight of someone rediscovering a long-lost landscape. After receiving a degree in mathematics and philosophy from Oxford University, Bellos left the world of numbers for the world of words — working as a journalist first in England and later in Brazil. Curiosity brought him back to math, and his return is captured in what could be described as a mathematical travelog. “I realized that I was behaving just like a foreign correspondent on assignment, except... (p. 30)

The author interweaves tales of scientists and surfers who, whether for study or an adrenaline rush, seek out monster waves. Doubleday, 2010, 352 p., $27.95. (p. 30)

In his first major work in nearly a decade, Hawking ponders the origins of the universe and the pursuit of a unified theory. Bantam Books, 2010, 208 p., $28. (p. 30)

A historical account of the sleeping sickness pandemic of the 1920s and the science behind it. Berkley, 2010, 291 p., $24.95. (p. 30)

Underwater rivers pulse with life in this lyrical exploration of ocean currents. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010, 246 p., $24. (p. 30)

A Berkeley physics professor puts his popular course for nonscientists into book form. Princeton Univ. Press, 2010, 517 p., $49.50. (p. 30)

In 2008, science and technology writer Nicholas Carr asked in The Atlantic if Google is “making us stupid.” His latest book is an effort to answer that question and, more broadly, to explore how the tools of the Internet age are altering the way people find and use information. Carr spends much of the book exploring how technology has shaped human habits of information consumption. Written language, for instance, made the poet-historian’s memory less crucial. With Gutenberg’s printing press, reading became widespread and the human brain, ever plastic, adapted to new demands. Now,... (p. 28)

Dire predictions about global warming make it hard to imagine how the human race will cope with the droughts, heat waves and advancing seas that climate change is expected to bring later this century. But economist Matthew Kahn has a message for prosperous urbanites in developed (and rapidly developing) nations who worry about the fate of their children and grandchildren in a greenhouse world: Don’t. In cities, where the world’s population is increasingly concentrated, market forces will ensure that all but the poorest have little to fear, Kahn argues. As long as the market is allowed... (p. 28)

Simple questions and answers teach math concepts and problem-solving skills. For kids age 10 to 14. Science, Naturally!, 2010, 208 p., $9.95. (p. 28)

A cosmology writer puts basic physics principles in an everyday context. Faber and Faber, 2010, 269 p., $25. (p. 28)

The history of lighting is a microcosm of scientific and technological advances since the Stone Age. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010, 368 p., $25. (p. 28)

The behavior of animal swarms, schools and colonies holds lessons for technology and design. Avery Press, 2010, 336 p., $20. (p. 28)

Humans have long tried — and mostly failed — to engineer weather and climate, a historian of science shows. Columbia Univ. Press, 2010, 344 p., $27.95. (p. 28)

Chimpanzees tantalize and taunt scientists. Some researchers see these expressive-faced apes as dandy models of human ancestors; others cite the perils of viewing another species as “almost human.” In his new book, Cohen, a science writer, takes a largely entertaining journey into the fractious world of chimp studies. He falls short, though, of fulfilling the title’s promise of showing that people are “almost chimpanzee.” Cohen is at his best in recounting colorful stories of chimp researchers and their findings on chimp biology, behavior and thinking. Consider the Soviet scient... (p. 35)