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Writer Bryan Appleyard’s Understanding the Present: An alternative history of science (I. B. Tauris, $14.50/£9.99) first came out in 1992, but his question – has science gone too far – is still relevant, and he’s always a provocative read.

Anthropologists Orlando Villas Boas and Claudio Villas Boas published their Xingu:The Indians and their myths (Souvenir Press, £10.99) in 1970. This classic account of Brazil’s indigenous tribes should be read with the knowledge that the brothers fought to protect local people against exploitation, and they won by establishing the first national park in Amazonia.