Book Review - Galileo's Finger by Peter Atkins

[redfiona99]

On the sites that want you to give a star rating, I've given this a 5. I feel it's a 4.75, but, quite sensibly, they don't let you make such small fractions. The only reason I don't give it the full 5 stars is that there's a few diagrams where you can tell the book was originally printed in colour and not much thought was given the the shade of grey it becomes when you press the grey-scale button, there's a couple of places where an extra diagram would have been a good idea (the section on genetics was crying out for a Punnet square) and there's a couple of minor typos that, although they are small, are in the worst possible places.

Other than that, I loved the book, because it explained some tricky concepts incredibly well, and in a way that meant I could transfer the understanding to other things (I'm thinking particularly of the 4D cube). I was a bit dubious about the structure to start with but, once you got to chapter 6 and 7 it started to make a lot more sense.

Thoroughly recommended.



Four laws that drive the universe by Peter Atkins
What Remains to Be Discovered: Mapping the Secrets of the Universe, the Origins of Life, and the Future of the Human Race by John Maddox
Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think by Alan Grafen
History of Western Science, 1543-2001 by John Gribbin
Earth: An Intimate History by Richard Fortey
Stories of the Invisible: A Guided Tour of Molecules by Philip Ball
Is God a Mathematician? by Mario Livio
Taking The Quantum Leap: The New Physics For Non-Scientists by Fred Alan Wolf
Knocking on Heaven's Door by Lisa Randall
Y: The Descent of Men by Steve Jones



I have already read and enjoyed one of the books on the list, which is a nice confirmation that the algorithm works.