I think these two book reviews are really good despite the biases of the authors. Sure, as some have pointed out, they are left leaning, but hey, it's Slate. The whole of Slate is marketed toward left leaning people. Every once in a while a right winger bursts into the Fray, they get knocked down a few pegs, and we all feel smug. Even so, I still learn the most about a subject by reading the Fray. Moving on. I am a scientist working with another group of scientists and economists. We've all discovered some major problems. In particular, there is something where corporations, government, and otherwise good scientists are misleading the public in a terribly dangerous way. If you're not knee deep in the numbers, then it's tough to put a finger on. We want to get the word out about our findings. So we go to conferences, write scientific journal articles, contact journalists, and so on. The problem is that we seem to be restricted to floating our knowledge to like minded folks who are likely going to believe the bigger picture of what we are saying. It's also glacially slow compared to what journalists enjoy. When we do have the chance to speak our minds to other kinds of people, they can find a problem with everything we say and use it as reason for disregarding the bigger picture. I usually only meet these people at parties or in some other mixed socio-economic setting. I admit it - I live in the Ivory Tower apartment complex where being "famous" as a scientist means that six other scientists really like my research. We all get together at conferences for group hugs and to complain about funding. I'm trying in my own way to change this. I am struggling with trying figure out how to make my research relevant. I see the relevance and meaning because it is my life's work. I also see that about half of my research is esoteric and not immediately useful to the greater public. The other half of my research is very relevant to every person on the planet. So far, the only people who have taken interest are those who want to make money with my knowledge. That's cool, I guess. It's kind of like affecting change in a punk rock sort of way from the inside. But seriously, I'd like to take our findings to the people, but there seems to be no venue beyond Wikipedia. I like these book reviews and the book simply because these folks are trying to understand the problem that I feel on a daily basis, but couldn't formulate into words.