Month: March 2005

Kitty Bartholomew’s Decorating Style: Affordable, Beautiful and Comfortable Decor for Real People Living with Real Budgets, by beloved TV personality Kitty Bartholomew and interior design journalist Kathy Price-Robinson, offers a wide range of clever, creative, non-costly ideas that have wowed millions of viewers of Kitty’s HGTV show and her enormously popular appearances on Oprah. Kitty believes that home decorating can be stylish and comfortable, budget-conscious and beautiful. Rather than suggest expensive, over-the-top solutions to decorating dilemmas, she comes up with inventive, resourceful ideas that are within the average person’s means. In this, her first book, Kitty brings her knowledge, decorating savvy, and enthusiasm to bear on every aspect of home design, from window, door, ceiling, wall, and floor treatments to furniture, lighting, and mirrors. There’s even a chapter on flea-market shopping, where readers will learn how to find the treasures buried among the trash and how to turn them into better-than-new décor. (Rodale Books)

More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement, by technologist Ramez Naam, an exciting tour of the way emerging technologies — from cloning and genetic engineering to life-extension techniques and brain-computer interfaces — are affecting our lives. Throughout this remarkable trip, Naam shares an impassioned vision for the future, with revealing insight into the ethical dilemmas posed by twenty-first-century science. Encouraging us to celebrate rather than fear these innovations, his powerful book separates fact from myth with elegant lucidity, arguing that these controversial technologies have the power to transform the human race for the better. (Broadway Books/Random House)

The Math Instinct: Why You’re a Mathematical Genius (Along with Lobsters, Birds, Cats, and Dogs), by Stanford mathematician and NPR’s “Math Guy” Keith Devlin, an accessible, entertaining look at the instinctive math used by dogs, cats, birds, bees and, yes, even humans. Filled with wonderful stories and examples, it offers the inverse message of John Allen Poulos’ Innumeracy, by explaining and celebrating the innate math sense of all kinds of animals and giving even the most number-phobic readers greater confidence in their own mathematical abilities. (Thunder’s Mouth Press/Avalon Publishing)