Lost voyages to the North Pole and more: Catching up with Download the Universe

Over at Download the Universe, we've added another crop of entertaining reviews about ebooks that you definitely should--or, in some cases, definitely should not--check out: "When an Autism Diagnosis Comes as a Blessing": Steve Silberman writes a powerful review about the reality of autism and a Kindle memoir about living with the condition. "Meandering Mississippi: An early journalism iBook is all wet": Seth Mnookin reads an account of last year's Mississippi floods and wonders why newspapers are squandering the opportunities that ebooks are offering them. "A Lost Explorer Returns: Todd Balf's Farthest North: David Dobbs revels in a well-told story of an ill-fated scientific voyage across the Arctic. "Leonardo: The First Great Science Ebook": I take a look at a lavishly-produced ebook about Leonardo da Vinci's forgotten work as a pioneer of anatomy. Staggeringly impressive. "A Time Machine for the Face of Earth": My review of a coffee-table-like ebook about how humans (and other forces) are changing the surface of the planet. "Artificial Epidemics: You're Not Sick, You're Just Overdiagnosed": Neuroscience blogger "Scicurious" is unimpressed with an ebook that claims that depression and prostate cancer are all in your head. (Confused? You should be.) "Titanic: The e-Book Nobody Loved": Jennifer Ouellette looks at one of the least successful Titanic anniversary tie-ins. Again, a wasted opportunity. And, finally, Seth Mnookin, Annalee Newitz, Maia Szavalitz, and I engaged in a three-day roundtable discussion about ebooks: how people read them, how they get published, and the future of books: Day 1: Crap futurism, pleasure reading, and DRMDay 2: Walled gardens, cruftiness, and a race to the bottomDay 3: Pirates, parties, pulps, and PowerPoint: Part 3 of a Download the Universe roundtable on e-reading