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REVIEW: Before fleeing in horror from a book about numbers and mathematics, take a moment to consider the humor of Charles Wheelan's “Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data” (ISBN: 978-0-393-34777-7). Odds are you'll enjoy it. Well, at least sixty or seventy percent of it.

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REVIEW: Demonstrating how the malignancy known as Conservatism has repeatedly poisoned the Supreme Court of the United States, "Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted" by Ian Millhiser (ISBN: 9781568584560) is detailed, horrific, and important.

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REVIEW: Barton Swaim has done what every writer secretly longs to do: publish the unvarnished reality about his jerk employer. Too short to be called a tell-all, 'The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics' (ISBN: 9781476769929) is an interesting portrait of a stupid and disgusting Republican politician (as if there's any other kind).

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REVIEW: Richard Nixon embodied nearly everything that is evil about Conservatives, and then he added alcoholism and paranoia to the mix. In Tim Weiner's 'One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon' (ISBN: 9781627790833), the revelations from Nixon's recently-released secret tapes go beyond the deceitfulness we already knew about Tricky Dick.

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Robotics, politics, and economics -- they're coming to take your job. That's just one warning in "Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future" (ISBN: 9780465059997), Martin Ford's quietly frightening book that's actually more about economics than robotics.

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REVIEW: It may sound like baby-talk but Dada was a controversial art movement that flared up during World War I and insisted on taking unconventionality to new heights. "Destruction Was My Beatrice: Dada and the Unmaking of the Twentieth Century" (ISBN: 9780465089963) by Jed Rasula presents a behind-the-scenes look at the lives of Dadaists as they attempted to forever alter art and literature.

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REVIEW: Making things go 'boom' is just one result of the incredible journey of the scientists working with Ernest O. Lawrence. His besmirch and destruction lairs -- oops, I mean research and development facilities -- shaped our modern age. Michael Hiltzik takes you up close and personal with the people of “Big Science” (ISBN: 9781451675757) who put us on the road to dealing with the dreaded military-industrial complex.

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BOOK REVIEW: If humanity keeps on its present course, the result may well be “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History” (ISBN: 9781250062185). Elizabeth Kolbert's writing is delightful even as her book documents a doomsday scenario.

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REVIEW: Chuckles, chortles, grins, guffaws and belly laughs. You'll find all that and more in 'The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America' (ISBN: 9780060920081), a wonderfully observant and politically incorrect book from Bill Bryson.

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