Annal:2004 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science & Technology
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the year 2004. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science & Technology
- Nonfiction books
- Nonfiction authors
- Science/Technology books
- Science/Technology authors.
The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change
- 2004 LATimes–Sci/Tech winner
- 2005 Kiriyama-Nonfiction finalist
- Score: 16.54
Scientists and natives wrestle with our changing climate in the land where it has hit first—and hardest.
A traditional Eskimo whale-hunting party races to shore near Barrow, Alaska—their comrades trapped on a floe drifting out to sea—as ice that should be solid this time of year gives way. Elsewhere, a team of scientists transverses the tundra, sleeping in tents, surviving on frozen chocolate, and measuring the snow every ten kilometers in a quest to understand the effects of albedo, the snow’s reflective ability to cool the earth beneath it.
Climate change…
The Proteus Effect: Stem Cells and Their Promise for Medicine
- 2004 LATimes–Sci/Tech finalist
- Score: 6.54
“Stem cells hold particular promise for unlocking life-saving secrets of the cell…”—National Academy of Sciences
Cutting edge stem cell research could pave the way to a bold new era in medicine, providing cell-based treatments—perhaps even cures—for scores of diseases and illnesses. But what exactly are these biological wonders—these things called stem cells? And what promise do they really hold for medicine? As acclaimed author Ann Parson suggests, one way to measure the future is to first search back through the past to take stock of how humans have…
Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century
- 2004 LATimes–Sci/Tech finalist
- Score: 6.54
Documents the drama of extraordinary inquiries into human psychology, bringing to life stories with unforgettable protagonists.
Lauren Slater delivers a witty and stunningly perceptive view of the progress of the science of the human mind in the last century. Beginning with B. F. Skinner and the legend of a child raised in a box, she takes us from a deep empathy with Stanley Milgram’s obedience subjects to a funny and disturbing re-creation of an experiment questioning the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. We observe cognitive dissonance among cult members…
On the Wing: To the Edge of the Earth with the Peregrine Falcon
- 2004 LATimes–Sci/Tech finalist
- Score: 6.54
In this extraordinary narrative, Alan Tennant, a passionate observer of nature, recounts his all-out effort to radio-track the transcontinental migration of the peregrine falcon—an investigation no one before him had ever taken to such lengths.
On the Wing transports us from the windswept flats of the Texas barrier islands—where the tundra falcons pause during their springtime journey north—to the Arctic, and then south, through Mexico, Belize, and into the Caribbean, in a hilariously picaresque and bumpy flight. At the helm is Tennant’s partner in…
His Brother's Keeper: A Story from the Edge of Medicine
- 2004 LATimes–Sci/Tech finalist
- Score: 6.54
From Jonathan Weiner, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Beak of the Finch, comes His Brother’s Keeper—the story of a young entrepreneur who gambles on the risky science of gene therapy to try to save his brother’s life.
Stephen Heywood was twenty-nine years old when he learned that he was dying of ALS—Lou Gehrig’s disease. Almost overnight his older brother, Jamie, turned himself into a genetic engineer in a quixotic race to cure the incurable. His Brother’s Keeper is a powerful account of their story, as they travel together to the…
