Book review: The Universe Inside You by Brian Clegg

[redfiona99]

The author states that his aim is not to give all the information about any one area but instead to give an overview of interesting facts from many areas. He succeeds in this - while I was reading it, I would tell my Mum some of the fun facts when she rang me. So I feel a little churlish saying I almost wish the author had included fewer things so he could spend more time on less so there would be less bouncing about between topics. Less bouncing about might also make the book read more smoothly, and might have ironed out a couple of peculiarities, for instance, on one page there is a truly terrible description of enzymes, what they are and how they work, and then, not more than two pages later, there's a perfectly good and workable description of the same thing. Yes, that description of enzymes is bad enough that I've docked half a star.

The book is a fun race through some interesting science, but I am left with a feeling that less would have been more.


The Wisdom of the Body: Discovering the Human Spirit by Sherwin B. Nuland
The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson
Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Underrated Organ by Giulia Enders
Inflight Science: A Guide to the World from Your Airplane Window by Brian Clegg
The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation by Matt Ridley
2030: Technology That Will Change the World by Rutger van Santen
The Runaway Brain: The Evolution of Human Uniqueness by Christopher Wills
Farmer Buckley's Exploding Trousers: And other odd events on the way to scientific discovery by Stephanie Pain
Human (Dk Smithsonian Institution) by Robert Winston
The Spark of Life: Electricity in the Human Body by Frances Ashcroft


They all sound like my kind of thing.