Even though this would be a hard book to pin down to a specific category, the “overview” categorization we’ve given it is no cop-out as it pulls together everything from sociology and political economy to physics, biology and maths. It’s fascinating to learn early on in the book that those who in the 20th century worried about the application of a mathematical technique like statistics to the human populace had got things entirely back-to-front. Statistics originated as a collection of information on people, a crude form of census and developed into a mathematical discipline, rather than the other way round. It’s a big book and it’s necessary to bear with Philip Ball through the rather (aptly?) ponderous chapter on Hobbes’ Leviathan up front, but once he gets into statistical physics he takes off. There’s a lot on economics, on political power, globalization and even the Internet. Again and again the book comes back to the way that mass human action has some resemblances to the...

I have to confess to putting off reading this book until the last moment, as I expected it to be a typical piece of Victorian sentimental unreadable stodge. I was wrong. Darwin’s little book (only 150 small pages with appendices) was originally written for his own children, and displays a very personal style of writing – though, as son Francis comments, his style was always more populist than was common then: “In writing he sometimes showed the same strong tendency to strong expressions that he did in conversation. Thus in the Origin, p440, there is a description of a larvel [sic] cirripede ‘with six pairs of beautifully constructed natatory legs, a pair of magnificent compound eyes and extremely complex antennae’. We used to laugh at him for this sentence, which we compared to an advertisement.” The main book is delightful because it demonstrates Darwin’s self-depreciating modesty, and the fascinating path he took from enthusiastic shooter of game, to amateur geologist (still his m...

A freak show. It’s not a nice term – not a nice concept, but something that has the terrible ability to fascinate at the same time as it horrifies. This is a subject where academic detachment is inconceivable. The whole concept of being entertained by the deformed is so disgusting (and so appealing to many) that it would seem a good popular science book on the subject of human mutation is practically impossible. Yet Armand Leroi has achieved it. It’s hard to believe that the accompanying TV series can manage this so well. However good Leroi’s intentions, TV can’t help but turn this topic into prurient viewing. And it doesn’t help that in the UK that the next programme in the broadcaster’s schedule is Big Brother – a show that is totally dependent on the voyeuristic enjoyment of the human condition and suffering of others. (A recent example of this was when the occupants of the Big Brother house had to sit on a roundabout that was spun until they vomited.) Arguably the TV version o...

It is almost impossible to rate these relentlessly hip books – they are pure marmite*. The huge Introducing … series (about 80 books covering everything from Quantum Theory to Islam), previously known as … for Beginners, puts across the message in a style that owes as much to Terry Gilliam and pop art as it does to popular science. Many of the pages feature large graphics with speech bubbles that are supposed to emphasise a point. If you scan the shelves on popular science it is surprisingly difficult to find a book on time, which is strange when you consider what a fundamental part of the physical world time is. Yes, you’ll discover books on time-keeping, on clocks and the measurement of time. Equally you’ll find books covering subjective time. Our personal experience of time, as opposed to time as a physical entity. But there’s very little on ‘real’ time. It was a very pleasant surprise, then, to discover this entry in the ‘Introducing…’ series is a little cracker. Not onl...

It’s no surprise that this weighty geological exploration of the Earth carries an endorsement by Bill Bryson on the cover, because at times it seems more like a travel book than a work of popular science – and actually, that’s distinctly refreshing. Fortey takes us to places where the Earth exposes its workings – such as Hawaii – and to key locations in the discoveries of Earth sciences, such as the Alpine location where the surprise discovery was made of a young layer of rock sitting beneath an older one, proving that dramatic folding had taken place. It often feels very like a book version of one of those TV documentaries that flies you all over the world to fill in a story. But Fortey is at his best when walking around a location and drifting between using “you” and “I” in a pleasantly unscientific fashion. This is a much better approach than simply going into the mechanisms that make the Earth the way it is, and though occasionally (just as is the case with those TV docume...

The fly in question is the atomic nucleus, which Cathcart tells us was, in the early days of its discovery, compared in size with the whole atom as a fly compares to a cathedral. This is the story of the race to split the atomic nucleus, not with any application of producing power or bombs in mind, but simply because very little was known about the nucleus, theory needed a lot of help (until quite a way through the book, for example, the neutron was just a crazy idea of Rutherford’s that hardly anyone believed in), and by battering the nucleus into bits more could be found out about it. It’s terrific stuff. Centred on the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, the main players are John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, two youngish researchers, with in the very near background the remarkable figure of Rutherford. As we follow the ups and downs of their progress in building bizarre equipment, there’s a terrific feeling of presence – it really is as if you have a view on what was happening. ...

“Oh, no, not the ancient Greeks? Yawn, yawn, what a bore.” If this is your natural reaction to a book on the ancient Greek origins of science, hold on there. It’s easy enough to think of the Greeks as a bit of a bore because they tended to be long winded and philosophising (and they foisted geometry on us, for goodness sake) – but the fact is that their work, mostly wrong though it may be, is the foundation of all of science. What’s more, Andrew Gregory makes the whole business interesting, without resorting to any fancy literary tricks – it’s a straightforward historical tour of the Greek prehistory of science that is simply bursting with insight. If you’ve ever wondered why it was such a big deal that Galileo and others should suggest that the Earth wasn’t at the centre of things, here is part of the explanation. It’s not just a matter of selfish assumption, but the entire Aristotelian physics depended on it. Without the Earth at the centre of things, his equivalent of gravity...