The Canon : A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science
Pulitzer-winning science writer Angier (Woman: An Intimate Geography) distills everything you’ve forgotten from your high school science classes and more into one enjoyable book, a guide for the scientifically perplexed adult who wants to understand what those guys in lab coats on the news are babbling about, in the realms of physics, chemistry, biology, geology or astronomy. More important even than the brief rundowns of atomic theory or evolution—enlivened by interviews with scientists like Brian Greene—are the first three chapters on scientific thinking, probability and measurement. These constitute the basis of a scientific examination of the world. Understand these principles, Angier argues, and suddenly, words like “theory” and “statistically significant” have new meaning. Angier focuses on a handful of key concepts, allowing her to go into some depth on each; even so, her explanations can feel rushed, though never dry. Angier’s writing can also be overadorned with extended metaphors that obscure rather than explain, but she eloquently asks us to attend to the universe: to really look at the stars, at the plants, at the stones around us. This is a pleasurable and nonthreatening guide for anyone baffled by science. (May 8)
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From Booklist
Popular indifference toward science regularly motivates writers to attempt mass-market enlightenment. Travel writer Bill Bryson’s Short History of Nearly Everything (2003) was a best-selling smash, and Angier, better credentialed in science writing and the author of the blockbuster Woman: An Intimate Geography (1999), now makes her bid. In contrast with Bryson’s fact- and history-heavy approach, Angier’s way of reaching the sciencephobic relies on love of language. Angier deploys extravagantly cascading metaphors, puns, and tangents to plant awareness of central scientific concepts for those who may be vague on what causes the seasons. Covering physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, and evolutionary and cell biology, Angier induces from scientists in each discipline a zeal comparable to her own for figural explanations of science. Scientific thinking, though, radically differs from our subjective experience of the natural world in a way that Angier creatively illustrates in explaining theory, probability, and scale. Some readers may find Angier’s wordplay excessively indulgent, but her core audience will delight in her ecstatic exuberance for all things scientific. Gilbert Taylor
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