I forgot that I had a gift card for Barnes and Noble sitting in my wallet. But I found it and used it to purchase a couple more books.
Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures by Carl Zimmer.
As a parasitologist, I doubt I'll learn much truly new from this book, but I think Carl Zimmer is a great science writer. I already know about parasites controlling the minds of their hosts (think Toxoplasma-infected mice). I also know that parasites can drink blood, eat tissue, block ducts, increase the size of your gonads to that of very large basketballs and chemically castrate you. Let's not enough talk about screwworms and other forms of myiasis. They can also masquerade as "self-tissue", change their antigenic coats, and generally fool the immune system into nonfunctionality.
I am sure that I will learn some really cool, and if I'm lucky, gross, examples of parasitic infections which may result in some revolting stories I can relate on my blog.
The second book is Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism by Philip Kitcher.
An interview with Dr. Kitcher can be found here. I bought this book because I don't own a book that discusses evolution vs creationism. I'm not sure this is the best book on the subject as it is 25 years old, but we will see. On the other hand, I'm sure I will not be surprised if the creationists are making the same arguments today that they made 25 years ago. Kitcher is a philosopher of science rather than a bench scientist and I think that will be good.
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