Saturday, July 29, 2006

Dava Sobel's popular science books

In my last post I mistakenly suggested that all the science books mentioned there or linked to might be a little challenging for me and other non-science majors. That was a mistake.

My too-hasty assessment may hold for several of the books but it almost certainly is not accurate about Dava Sobel's Longitude.

William Grimes wrote in the New York Times about her most recent book:
Sobel, the author of Longitude and Galileo's Daughter, has aimed The Planets squarely at a mass audience receptive to the romance of the heavens, ready to have its mind boggled by weird and wonderful facts, and eager to coo and trill over verbal baby pictures of peppy little Mercury and seductive Venus.
Click here to read an interesting article about Sobel and her inspiration in Australia's The Age.

Perhaps I'm wrong about the reader-friendliness of the other titles as well. If those books sound appealing, do a little investigating on your own. Or just pick up the book and dig in. The last thing I want to do here on the blog is discourage anyone from reading a good book.

--Marshal Zeringue