The Orphan Conspiracies: 29 Conspiracy Theories from The Orphan Trilogy, by James & Lance Morcan. US$5.62 (Kindle Edition), Amazon. Reviewed by David Riddell. Lance and James Morcan are a New ... (1552 words)

Pills & Potions at the Cotter Medical History Trust, by Claire le Couteur. Otago University Press, 2014. RRP $25. Reviewed by Vicki Hyde. I didn't know whether to laugh, cry or wince as I paged ... (427 words)

Janelle Wallace reviews Salt Sugar Fat: How The Food Giants Hooked Us, by Michael Moss. Random House Publishing, 2013. Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Michael Moss' book takes a ... (182 words)

The Scope of Skepticism: Interviews, Essays and Observations from the Token Skeptic Podcast, by Kylie Sturgess. Podblack Books, 2012. 151pp. About $NZ18, or NZ$6.40 for Kindle. Visit tokenskeptic.org ... (485 words)

The Believing Brain: how we construct beliefs and reinforce them as truths by Michael Shermer. Times books, New York. 386pp. ISBN 978-0-8050-9125-0. Reviewed by Martin Wallace. Aa a member of NZ ... (456 words)

The Bosnian Pyramids: The Biggest Hoax in History? Directed by Jurgen Deleye. VOF de Grenswetenschap. Watch online (www.thebiggesthoaxinhistory.com): €5.95. DVD: €19.95 (excl. shipping). Reviewed by ... (331 words)

The Moral Landscape: How Science can Determine Human Values. Sam Harris. 2010. Free Press, New York. ISBN 978-1-4391-7121-9 Reviewed by Martin Wallace. If faith is belief without evidence, then it is ... (390 words)

Bad Science, by Ben Goldacre. ISBN 978-0-00-728487-0. Fourth Estate, London. $26.99. Reviewed by Feike de Bock. For those who have not yet heard of Ben Goldacre, his latest book Bad Science is an ... (537 words)

Evolution - What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters. Donald R Prothero, Columbia University Press. Reviewed by Louette McInnes. If your local library doesn't have this book, go out right now and ... (414 words)

Blind Faith, by Ben Elton. Bantam Press. Reviewed by David Riddell. The world of Ben Elton's latest novel is a skeptic's worst nightmare. In this future London, government has been captured by the ... (529 words)

Religion Gone Bad, by Mel White, Penguin, 2006. Reviewed by Bob Metcalfe. White is a Gay Christian who has worked for many US evangelical movements. At least, that is, until he came to terms with the ... (318 words)

The Plausibility of Life-resolving Darwin's dilemma, by Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart. Yale University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-300-10865-6. Reviewed by Louette McInnes. This book was written for the ... (439 words)

The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins. Bantam Press, $40. Reviewed by Vincent Gray. In 1811 Percy Bysshe Shelley was expelled from Oxford University for writing a book entitled The Necessity for ... (540 words)

Point of Inquiry www.pointofinquiry.org Point of Inquiry is the radio show and podcast of the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, New York. The Center of Inquiry is a think-tank affiliated with the State ... (71 words)

How to Poison Your Spouse the Natural Way: A Kiwi Guide to Safer Food offers an interesting, non-technical, easy-to-read description of the risks we face at the dinner table. Reviewers and readers ... (113 words)

Jim Ring finds some material to pass the time on a recent flight. Queensland is the home of young-earth creationism in Australia so it was perhaps not surprising that I found Creation Magazine for ... (686 words)

Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origin, by Robert M Hazen. Joseph Henry Press, Washington, DC, USA. Reviewed by Bernard Howard. There's one thing I hope for before I die; to hear of some ... (387 words)

New Zealand's Amazing D'Urville Artefact and Equations of Life, by Ross Wiseman, Discovery Press, 2004. Reviewed by Hugh Young. This book proves that there is no limit to the human imagination. If ... (676 words)

Debunked! by G Charpak & H Broch, translator BK Holland. Johns Hopkins University Press, Reviewed by Bernard Howard. For a refreshingly new look at some familiar skeptical themes, try this ... (492 words)

Skepticality is a hugely entertaining podcast that explores rational thought, critical thinking, science and the de-bunking of the supernatural and pseudo-science. It features interviews with ... (63 words)

The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life, by Richard Dawkins. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, $79.99. All life has a common ancestor. Or to put it another way, every creature alive today, ... (315 words)

How to Poison your Spouse the Natural Way: A Kiwi Guide to Safe Eating, by Jay D Mann. JDM & Associates, $24.95. Reviewed by David Riddell. A Christchurch mother who fed her five-year-old son raw ... (329 words)

ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE FOR DUMMIES, by James Dillard and Terra Diane Ziporyn. Hungry Minds, Inc. These books are all subtitled "A Reference for the Rest of Us!". Perhaps I'm prejudiced but as far as ... (783 words)

A DEVIL'S CHAPLAIN: Selected Essays. Richard Dawkins. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003. ISBN 0 297 82973 4. We Dawkins fans have been waiting since "Unweaving the Rainbow" in 1998 for this. Unlike its ... (344 words)

1421: THE YEAR CHINA DISCOVERED THE WORLD, by Gavin Menzies. Bantam, $54.95. Zheng He is not a name that is well known in the west. However, his seven voyages from China, through the Indian Ocean to ... (538 words)

PSEUDOSCIENCE AND THE PARANORMAL, by Terrence Hines. 2nd edition, Prometheus. ISBN 1-57392-979-4. This book thoroughly demolishes the pretence that laboratory experiments in ESP have produced ... (607 words)

In Darwin's Shadow: The life and science of Alfred Russel Wallace, by Michael Shermer. Oxford University Press. Alfred Russel Wallace was the co-discoverer of perhaps the most revolutionary idea in ... (447 words)

Mind the Gaffe, by RL Trask. Penguin, 2002. $24.95. Mind the Gap! The book title is intended to remind all who have waited on curved London Underground railway platforms of the risk a careless step ... (398 words)

Snake Oil And Other Preoccupations, by John Diamond. Vintage, 2001, $29.95 I recently reviewed for NZ Skeptic this author's previous book (C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too), which described his ... (377 words)

The Psychology of the Psychic, 2nd edition, by David Marks. Prometheus Books. When David Marks and Richard Kammann published the first edition of this book in 1980, it rapidly became a standard ... (517 words)

Because Cowards get Cancer too, by John Diamond, Random House, 1998 So John Diamond is dead; at age 47 killed by his tongue cancer. He may not be well known in New Zealand, but was a popular ... (922 words)

In Mendel's Footnotes: An Introduction to the Science and Technologies of Genes and Genetics from the 19th century to the 22nd, by Colin Tudge. Jonathan Cape, $59.95. The recent advances in genetic ... (379 words)

It was a Ngatea farmer who finally got to Doug Edmeades on an Autumn day in 1985. Then employed as a scientist for the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF) Dr Edmeades had amassed a ... (263 words)

The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals, by Simon Conway Morris. Oxford University Press. Cradle of Life: The Discovery of Earth's Earliest Fossils, by J William Schopf. ... (293 words)

Numerology, or What Pythagoras Wrought, by Underwood Dudley, Mathematical Association of America, Washington DC, 1997 Here's a book that might go on the New Age shelves by mistake. Who'd have thought ... (439 words)

UFOs & Alien Contact: Two Centuries of Mystery, by Robert E. Bartholomew & George S. Howard; 1998. Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY, US. ISBN 1-57392-200-5 Readers of NZ Skeptic will have seen ... (768 words)

UFOs & ALIEN CONTACT: Two Centuries Of Mystery, Robert Bartholomew and George Howard. Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY, USA. READERS of NZ Skeptic will have seen R.E. Bartholomew's article "The ... (764 words)

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark, by Carl Sagan. Headline, $29.95. In 1656 Thomas Ady, in his book A Candle in the Dark, was one of the first to speak out against the witch ... (522 words)

NEW ZEALAND MYSTERIES, by Robyn Gosset; Bush Press, 1996; 208 pages; $29.95 There are a great many books on mysteries of the breathless "believe it or not" variety -- this is not one of them. Gosset ... (201 words)

DARK NATURE -- A NATURAL HISTORY OF EVIL, by Lyall Watson; Hodder & Stoughton, 1995; $19.95 The book has been divided into three parts, Dark Nature, Human Nature and Evil Nature, and is extremely ... (247 words)

**RIVER OUT OF EDEN: A DARWINIAN VIEW OF LIFE by Richard Dawkins. ** Reviewed by Bernard Howard ** We start by setting this book into its two contexts. In the publishing context it is the fourth in ... (451 words)

The Hippopotamus by Stephen Fry; Arrow Books Ltd, 1995; xi + 356 pp; $19.95 pbk Readers familiar with Stephen Fry only for his TV comic appearances (A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Jeeves and Wooster, ... (467 words)

Post-mortem on the autopsy or autopsy on the post-mortem? Post-mortem undoubtedly. There could hardly be a deader duck than the supposed Roswell autopsy film, whatever species of being or inanimate ... (383 words)

Guidelines For Testing Psychic Claimants by Richard Wiseman and Robert L. Morris, 1995, 72pp., University of Hertfordshire Press, Hatfield, UK, (pound)7.00. Reviewed by Bernard Howard When author ... (659 words)

All the Trouble in the World, by P.J. O'Rourke; Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd 1994; 340 pages; $20.00 paperback Everyone will enjoy this book. Well, everyone except paranormalists, ecological ... (471 words)

The Facts of Life: Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, by Richard Milton; Transworld Publishers; $15.95 Richard Milton has written this book as a "hang on a minute" reservation about Darwinism and its ... (707 words)

Nostradamus -- The 1994 Annual Almanac by V.J. Hewitt. Random House, $15.95 This book explains an approach to interpreting the French "prophet" Nostradamus's predictions. It is the culmination of 16 ... (762 words)