What is David Dobbs reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: David Dobbs, author of Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral and other books.

One book he mentions:

Now I'm reading another sort of tour de force, György Buzsáki's Rhythms of the Brain -- nonfiction, and a serious change of gears -- which is about how the brain's rhythms, the synchronization of the brain waves emitted by its various parts, lie at the heart of our capacity to think and take action. A beautiful, difficult book, dense with beautiful facts and ideas. [read on]

(In March 2007, György Buzsáki's Rhythms of the Brain was featured at the Page 69 Test.)

Oliver Sacks wrote of Dobbs' Reef Madness:

"Brilliantly written, sometimes almost unbearably poignant, Reef Madness provides an enthralling picture of three grand scientific minds: the stormy relationship of Louis and Alexander Agassiz and their fateful enmeshment with Charles Darwin. The coral reef story becomes a micorcosm of the conflicts -- between idealism and empiricism, God and evolution -- which were to split science and culture in the nineteenth century and which still split them today."

Dobbs writes for publications including the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Science Times section, Wired, and Scientific American Mind, where he is a contributing editor. View a selected list of his articles.

He also keeps his own blog, Smooth Pebbles, where he comments on developments in science, medicine, nature, and culture. He lectures frequently on neuroscience, science writing, and the sociology, history, and philosophy of science.

Writers Read: David Dobbs.

--Marshal Zeringue