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Review:
The Ascent of Science is a remarkable achievement: a concise, informative, and easily readable book that breathes life into an often dry, impenetrable subject. The lengthy text spans several centuries of scientific discovery and theory, from the Renaissance to the nineties--it even looks to the future. This is also a who's who of major scientific players throughout history: Voltaire, Newton, Bacon, and Einstein, among others. But don't be put off by the prospect of information overload--author Brian Silver remains succinct and engaging throughout, and even highly complex areas such as relativity and chaos are made accessible by Silver's wit and energy. This is more than a primer on science; Silver contextualizes science within the philosoph... Rest of this review on the detail page
(Review by amazon.com)
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Reviews (2) and details of The Ascent of Science

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Review:
When I were a lad, we used to all buy the "Handbook of Chemistry and Physics" produced by the Chemical Rubber Company. I'm not quite sure *why* we all bought the "CRC Bible", but we did. I still haul mine out from time to time to look up the odd formula. Coleman and Dewar have done the same thing on a reduced scale, and added some biology and geology. This means it is the right size, and broadly enough based, to be hauled off the shelf time and again by amateurs and professionals alike. Science grads will recognize old friends they haven't seen or used in a while. Those who work in the sciences can quickly find a half-remembered equation in a related field. The layperson can find interesting and informative tidbits. For the most... Rest of this review on the detail page
(Review by Rob Slade)
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Reviews (1) and details of The Addison-Wesley Science Handbook (Helix Books)

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Book description
"[A] colorful cast of luminaries and rogues . . . This biography provides an intriguing glimpse into the beginnings of computer science and a reminder that character is destiny."­­Wall Street Journal Known in her day as an "enchantress of numbers," Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace, daughter of the poet Lord Byron, was one of the most fascinating women of the 19th century. In collaboration with Charles Babbage, inventor of the mechanical "thinking machine" that anticipated by more than a century the invention of the computer, Ada devised a method of using punch cards to calculate Bernoulli numbers and thus became the mother of computer programming. It was in her honor that, in 1980, the U.S. Department of Defense named its computer language ... Rest of this review on the detail page
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Reviews (2) and details of The Bride of Science: Romance, Reason, and Byron's Daughter

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Review:
Santa Fe Institute mathematician John Casti calls The Cambridge Quintet "scientific fiction," a work whose goal "is to present a lively and comprehensible exposition of the intellectual and emotional uncertainties involved in shaping the future of human knowledge." Casti sets the way-back machine for 1949, and imagines that C.P. Snow (pundit, civil servant, and physicist) hosts a dinner party in his rooms at Cambridge University to discuss the possibility that a machine could be made to think. The guests: philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, mathematician and computer demigod Alan Turing, physicist Erwin Schrödinger, and geneticist J.B.S. Haldane. Not surprisingly, the party comes to no single conclusion, but Casti's fo... Rest of this review on the detail page
(Review by amazon.com)
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Reviews (2) and details of The Cambridge Quintet: A Work of Scientific Speculation

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Book description
This collection of 447 annotated references provides an overview of the literature addressing the creation/evolution controversy for students, teachers, lawyers, writers, historians, scientists, sociologists, clerics, and other interested persons. Fifty-four annotations in the chapter on historical references highlight influential volumes published between 1543 and 1980--classic works that inform the views of later writers. These historical works are listed chronologically in order of publication. The remaining 393 entries feature books published from 1981 (the year of the "Scopes II" trial in Arkansas) to 1996, and include works that address historical, sociological, philosophical, religious, cosmological, geological, biological, and anthr... Rest of this review on the detail page
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Reviews (2) and details of The Creation/Evolution Controversy