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The Ascent of Gravity by Marcus Chown (view source)
Revision as of 16:03, 11 April 2017
, 16:03, 11 April 2017no edit summary
My two minor quibbles are endnotes instead of footnotes, and invented scenes. The endnotes are a mixture of references to scientific papers which he needs to give but the reader can safely ignore, and actual explanatory paragraphs that give extra detail. Personally I find it irritating flicking back and forth to see if I need to look at the note or not. The invented scenes are rare, thankfully, and for some readers they will add a touch of human colour but in the vein of dramatic reconstructions on TV they show us Einstein or Newton having their moment of epiphany when in fact we haven't a clue how it happened.
This book will almost certainly leave you more interested in science than you were beforehand, as the enthusiasm is catching. Luckily, Marcus Chown has written plenty of other books so for further well-explained physics you could try [[We Need To Talk About Kelvin by Marcus Chown|We Need to Talk About Kelvin]] and if you want to broaden into wider scientific fields that touch on everyday life, there's What a Wonderful World [[What a Wonderful World by Marcus Chown\|What a Wonderful World]].
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