An excellent book to read on science and mathematic related ideas. It's easy to understand and fun to read. It doesn't only stop at the scientists' and mathematicians' lives and their work. Read it and find out... More!

I loved this book. It brings together the writings of some of the worlds greatest minds on the subject of science. This is a most read.

This book is obviously only geared towards those remotely interested in physics, so that's what it does: cater to the contemplative individual. Believe it or not, this collection of writings grabbed me from the first subtitle, 'Atoms in Motion', and literally propelled me through the next 800 pages of lectures and dissertations, ranging from Mr. Isaac Asimov to Albert Einstein. If you've been looking for a comprehensive and sometimes exhaustively extensive glimpse into the universe of physics and mathematics, Mr. Ferris' treasury will not disappoint. What's more, if you buy it here at Amazon, you definitely get every penny's worth. I mean, c'mon, 18 bucks? This sucker is hard-bound. Don't pass this one up.

I first encountered the writing of Timothy Ferris more than a decade ago, when I read Coming of Age in the Milky Way, a book about astronomy's origins and its memorable historic figures. It was one of the first astronomy books I bought, and it is one of only a small number of books that I have read a second or third time.

Since then, Dr. Ferris has written several highly acclaimed books. This, his most recent book,is a companion volume to the television documentary with the same name. It is an ambitious and thought-provoking work, written in an almost poetic style. The book is lavishly illustrated, containing hundreds of images, including many breath-taking space photos. It asks many questions, but the two main questions are "Are we alone?" and "Is anybody listening?"

Although Life Beyond Earth presents facts and theories, it is mainly an exploration of who we are, where we came from, and whether we are alone in the Universe. Although the book is based on the latest and most accurate research about life on Earth and in the universe, Ferris poses many more questions than he answers. If you have even the most basic knowledge of the topic, this book holds few new facts. Its goal is not to educate but to provoke thought and wonder. In this, Ferris succeeds.

Again, a single reading of this book was not adequate. The text was too tantalizing, the pictures too wondrous and distracting. According to Ferris, life is an "emergent property"--something that can only be studied as a system rather than as a collection of parts. Perhaps that applies to Life Beyond Earth also. It seems that I always read a Tim Ferris book more than once. I recommend that you do too.

Are we alone in the universe? Contemporary science is attempting an answer and Life Beyond Earth provides a companion to the two-hour documentary of the same name, examining the various approaches to the problem, including hundreds of photos and illustrations, and considering how life and intelligence began. A fine visual and text history of the search for life in the cosmos.

Cosmologist Tim Ferris tackles everything in this series of essays which are hard to describe. Better just to list the various topics which Ferris writes about:

- SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence)
- Intergallactic communication
- Multiple intelligences (Joe Montana's premotor cortex
- Split brain studies
- Death Star (26 million year mass extinctions caused by asteroid showers resulting from the orbit and resulting change in gravitational pull of a passing 2nd star)
- Virtual Reality
- Rainforest Destruction

Ferris' book is an entertaining read and a plea for humans not to wipe ourselves out.

August 2, 1999

I would like to take a minute to thank Timothy Ferris for abridging, The Red Limit: The Search for the Edge of the Universe, to audio. Shortly after my son was born I began looking for audio novels which would allow me to share my passion of astronomy, physics and astrophysics with my then six month old son, The Red Limit: The Search for the Edge of the Universe, was perfect meeting all the criteria. Timothy Ferris also gets top marks for announciation, his speaking is very clear and easy to understand. It is because of his outstanding work that I decided to purchase his other audio novels, The Whole Shebang and Coming of Age in the Milky Way.

That was 11 months ago. All of Timothy Ferris audio novels turned out to be excellent with a high standard of quality in production. What started off as a casual experiment with audio bedtime stories for my son has now become firmly entrenched as a nightly event. My son now 18 months old, has moved onto the Richard Feyman Physics audio lectures which are also carried by Amazon.

I would like to encourage Timothy Ferris to continue produce more of these types of edutainment audio programs on tape or CD. I love listening to scientific books on my way to work and also love to share them with my 18 month old son as his bedtime stories. In addition to the content, the high level of clear announciation in the Timothy Ferris work is great, it really helps my son to learn new words, concepts and the organization of the english language. More than he would ever obtain in normal everyday speech.

I would love to see the following subjects abrigded to audio for distribution through Amazon.com. Maths, sciences, physics, astrophysics, geology, any and all space related topics, gravity, unified field theory, electromagnetics, electronics, microproccessor design, optics, micro-optics, electro-optics, light and the theory there of, satellites, satellite orbital mechanics and related theory, engineering, chemical engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering.

I do not have time in my busy daily schedule to read very much, but do I have five hours a day to listen and learn.

If you make it I will support it.

Arnold D Veness

This book is an excellent tour through history of astronomy and astronomers quest to uncover our place (and time) in the universe. Ferris goes into quite a bit of detail and does not treat his readers with kid gloves. There are many interesting anecdotes about various astronomers and Ferris sometimes gives mini biographies of the more interesting/eccentric of them. Ferris starts with the greek astonomers such has hypocratus, goes through copernicus, kepler, galileo, newton, and then onto the astronmers of the last 200 years. But in his final section, he also talks about how the geosciences, and the theory of evolution began to give us a better perspective of where we fit in the universe not just in space but in time. The last chapters are devoted to the cutting edge of science - quantum physics. Ferris reports discoveries up to the point practically that this book was published! All in all, a good read for anyone interested in science and particularly in Astronomy.

This book is an excellent tour through history of astronomy and astronomers quest to uncover our place (and time) in the universe. Ferris goes into quite a bit of detail and does not treat his readers with kid gloves. There are many interesting anecdotes about various astronomers and Ferris sometimes gives mini biographies of the more interesting/eccentric of them. Ferris starts with the greek astonomers such has hypocratus, goes through copernicus, kepler, galileo, newton, and then onto the astronmers of the last 200 years. But in his final section, he also talks about how the geosciences, and the theory of evolution began to give us a better perspective of where we fit in the universe not just in space but in time. The last chapters are devoted to the cutting edge of science - quantum physics. Ferris reports discoveries up to the point practically that this book was published! All in all, a good read for anyone interested in science and particularly in Astronomy.

One of the most enjoyable books I've read. Ferris has sparked my new-found interest in science and physics. I liked this book even better than "A Brief History of Time".

Since the earliest days of humankind people have looked to the night sky in awe and struggled to unlock its secrets. In "Seeing in the Dark," author Timothy Ferris details the many contributions amateur astronomers have made to our understanding of the universe. He leads the reader on a tour of the sky, from the Moon, Sun, and nearby planets, through the outer reaches of our solar system to the Milky Way galaxy and beyond, indicating the many discoveries and ongoing investigations by amateurs. But the real strength of the book is its many interviews with amateur astronomers, in which the author paints portraits of diverse individuals all sharing a passion for observation and discovery. The author clearly knows his science (and provides detailed endnotes for those who want to learn more), and as an amateur astronomer himself he knows the community about which he writes. His lyrical descriptions of what it's like to gaze upon distant worlds convey the passion "backyard stargazers" feel toward their avocation. My one quibble is that I would have liked to see diagrams of the different kinds of telescopes he discusses.

Timothy Ferris has an unusual gift for explaining complex subjects in a highly readable, even felicitous, style. The first book I read of his, Coming of Age in the Milky Way, was a thoroughly entertaining history of how we gradually came to understand the impossibly vast scale of the universe. It evoked awe of our strange and wonderful cosmos while staying refreshingly free of the antireligious crankiness and oddly mystical naturalism of Carl Sagan. Seeing in the Dark focuses on areas of astronomy that any of us could plausibly make contributions in - planets, asteroids, comets, the sun, the moon, even SETI. It is fascinating to learn how amateurs continue to make important discoveries and, indeed, how the professionals still depend on them to help expand our understanding of the solar system and beyond.

But what I gained most from reading this book was the realization that I don't really have to own an expensive telescope and live in the open desert to enjoy stargazing. I especially appreciated such personal stories as Ferris viewing a lunar occultation of Saturn with a small telescope from his deck in San Francisco. He had to maneuver the tripod into a far corner, wait until the planet drifted into view between his house and a tree, then cope with a bright streetlight by pressing his eye tight against the eyepiece - but it was indisputably worth the effort. This book inspired me to pull my cheap little 2.4 inch refractor out of the garage where it had languished for fifteen years and look again at Saturn's rings and Jupiter's moons. It has re-awakened my youthful fascination with outer space and I am greatly appreciative.

Seeing in the Dark: How Backyard Stargazers are Probing Deep Space and Guarding Earth from Interplanretary Peril written by Timothy Ferris is a wonderfully well-written personal account about astronomy. Stargazing in this book is more of the backyard amateur variety, however no less serious than the professionals. Interest has been on the increase due mainly to the internet.

With internet communication amateurs can set their telescopes up and the computer can control the telescopes with computers making amateur astronomy more serious. The author has an easy going style of narrative and you can tell he loves telling a story about something he really loves.

This is an infectous narrative bringing the reader into the subject as a participant; making the glories of the stars a part of your lives. Anyone can get started in backyard astronomy by just going outside with a star chart on a dark night and looking up. I remember many a warm Summer night growing up spending hours at night looking up and wondering about the starlingt and the millions of years that it took to get here. This book has a rekindling power to it and brings back those evenings for me.

There are starcharts in the back of the book along with information about the closest stars and planetary information about the number of moons. What I found interesting about this book is a reading list which gives the reader something to further his/her knowledge, along with this there is a glossary of terms used throughout the book making for and interesting read.

If you like popular science with a mentor guiding you along as he relates his past and enthusiasm this is your book, you won't be disappointed.

. . .is what one reviewer said when this book was first published. It's a claim which is hard to dispute. The hard core scientist might not appreciate it's "coffee table" book format -- but heck, the book wasn't written for such a person in the first place!

Filled with readable and comprehendable text and citations ranging from Thorton Wilder's "Our Town" to St. Julian's "Revelations of Divine Love", this book will prompt even the most unscientific mind to gaze at the sky with new wonder.

But beyond the layout, beyond the scientific information, beyond the citations, the book is best described by its absolutely stunning deep-sky photography. It is mind-boggling to me how someone could look at the night sky and question the existence of God.

"He who made the Plei'ades and Orion, and turns deep darkness into the morning,and darkens the day into night,who calls for the waters of the sea, and pours them out upon the surface of the earth, the LORD is his name" -- from the book of Amos the Prophet

Heaven's net casts wide.
Though its meshes are coarse, nothing slips through.
-- Lao Tzu

If ever there was a physical manifestation of poetry, the starry sky at night, the panoply of objects that populate the heavens, would come close. The character of Dr. Arroway in Carl Sagan's Contact exclaims, upon seeing the glorious objects of the universe up close during her epic flight, 'Poetry! They should have sent a poet!'

This book, Galaxies, is a book on a grand scale, as is its subject. It is a lavishly illustrated coffee-table book the size of a small coffee table, the pages measure 13 inches by 15 inches, a huge footprint of a book, with most of the photographs and diagrams sized full-page.

Timothy Ferris, at the time of this book was first published, was a professor of English at Brooklyn College CUNY. He has since gone on to fame as a science writer, particularly in the field of astronomy, and now teaches astronomy and science writing on the other coast, at UC Berkeley. Largely due to clear writing, diligent research that is thorough, and a good eye for visuals (astronomy is a visual science in many ways, and Ferris selected the photographs for this book himself) Ferris has put together a tremendous introduction to the subject of galaxies, impressing with the scale of the book the tremendous size and scale of galaxies.

Being an English professor, he of course had a wide knowledge of literature, and this is apparent from his choice of side notes, quotes and references, which populate not only the captions and taglines, but interpermeate the text on a regular basis. Here in the midst of scientific discussion one will find quotes from Shakespeare, Thornton Wilder, St. Juliana, Heraclitus, Ben Jonson, and more.

The first section deals with the basic definitions of what a galaxy is, the discovery of galaxies, and our place (and their place) in the cosmos. From here, Ferris takes us on a brief tour of the galaxy from the inside, using of course our own Milky Way galaxy, the only galaxy we can know from the inside. By looking at the constituent elements of a galaxy--stars, nebulae, star clusters, supernovae and black holes--Ferris introduces us to the life cycle of stars and some of the dynamics of galactic formation and evolution. Some of the more stunning photographs of this book are in this section, particularly the nebulae (gaseous formations that represent both the beginning and the end of life cycles of stars).

From a tour of our own galaxy, Ferris proceeds to the Local Group of Galaxies, and begins a discussion of the different kinds of galaxies. Our own, the Milky Way, is a fairly large spiral galaxy. This is not the most common type, however, nor the most rare. Our galaxy has attendant galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (named so because they are only visible from the Southern Hemisphere; named in honour of a European explorer who trekked down there), which are mostly blobs of stars, with no formal structure as a spiral would have. The nearest spiral is the Andromeda, part of the local pair (most spirals come in pairs). Andromeda also has smaller, blob-like satellite galaxies, with a smaller proto-spiral (M33) not far off.

In the next section, Ferris examines the types of galaxies which populate the Local Group, the Local Supergroup, and other groupings of galaxies. These include elliptical galaxies, spiral galaxies, barred spiral galaxies, and lenticular (or SO) galaxies. Ellipticals often appear as blobs, sometimes with halos, and no intricate structures. Spirals can be more of less tightly 'wound', arms around a nucleus with a bulge. Barred spirals are more intricate yet, and have a 'bar' or spindle-shaped grouping of stars that extends straight out from the central bulge and nucleus, to which the arms of the spiral seem to be attached. Lenticular galaxies are hardest yet to categorise--they might be ellipticals in a spiral mode, perhaps somehow robbed of their arms. How they evolved is a mystery. Beyond this, there are yet other irregular galaxies, which are often the results of galactic collisions and gravitational interferences.

Some galaxies seem to have violent events occurring, gaseous jets or lots of light and radio activity which speaks of harsh activity. Vast energy spikes and marred appearances give an interesting flavour to astronomical research. Often these happen from interactive galaxies, in which they are playing off each other, or indeed, as some will swallow up others.

Ferris continues his outward rush to the very limits of the universe, until we encounter quasars, the largest of large groupings of superclusters, and a brief discussion of the geometries and nature of space and time. The expansion of the universe, and possible futures (infinite expansion or ultimate collapse, or somewhere in between?) are discussed, as well as paradoxes which might arise in a collapsing universe.

Photographic plates are shown throughout in colour, in black and white, in negative, and in grid-overlays. There is a wide variety, showing the variety of ways in which astronomical objects are examined. This is a fabulous book. Rush to get it.

What we have learned
Is like a handful of earth;
What we have yet to learn
Is like the whole world.
-- Avvaiyar

I read this book maybe 20 years ago as a little kid, and I still think about it. It really stimulated a lifelong interest in astronomy and cosmology. If you aren't schooled in astronomy I think it will open your eyes and present to you a view of the universe that will change the way you look at things forever. If I could find more copies of this book, and it were cheaper, I would hand it out like candy to the numerous people unschooled in astronomy I've met in the last 20 years, who, I am sure this book would greatly enrich.

The strength of this book is its photographs from various observatories around the world. I have not--in 20 years of looking, found a collection of astrophotographs that comes close. They are inspiring! Other manmade illustrations in the book vividly illustrate just where we are in the universe. Mr. Ferris also does an admirable job taking you by the hand and poetically explaining what is really out there when you gaze into the night sky. You will be amazed by what you don't now know.

If you can get a copy, get it, read it, enrich yourself, show it to your kids, and don't let it go.

This is the first of these collections that I have read, and it is very good. The articles are chosen from a wide spectrum of publications from the year 2000, including Scientific American, National Geographic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, etc., which means most of the essays were written in 1999 or thereabouts. There is a minor concentration on the exciting developments in genetics and microbiology, including "The Recycled Generation" by Stephen S. Hall, which is about stem-cell research; "The Genome Warrior" by Richard Preston, which is about Craig Ventor and the human genome project; "DNA on Trial" by Peter J. Boyer, focusing on lawyers Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld's Innocence Project; and a couple of articles on AIDS, "The Mystery of AIDS in South Africa" by Helen Epstein and "The Virus and the Vaccine" by Debbie Bookchin and Jim Schumacher.

My favorite piece was "The Small Planets" by Erik Asphaug where I learned a little about the surprising physics of asteroids, in particular that they are most likely composed of rubble held lightly together by low gravity instead of being solid objects. When they collide, the "rubble piles" are disturbed, but within a few hours most of the pieces come back together again if the collision was not too violent. I also particularly liked John Terborgh's piece "In the Company of Humans" in which he demonstrates that animals can be attracted to humans for reasons as diverse as safety in numbers (like different species of birds foraging together) or being fascinated by a lemon-scented detergent used by a primatologist. He relates the story of a sick peccary that hung out near humans until it got well, that way avoiding hungry jaguars. Also fascinating was Greg Critser's "Let Them Eat Fat" which is about how the fast food industry is "super-sizing" us into obesity. (By the way, I tried for the first time a few months ago a Krispy Kreme donut, just to see what all the fuss was about. It was a warm puppy of an "empty-calorie" confection, pure white flour, made almost as light as air, smothered in fat and glazed with pure white sugar. It practically melted in my mouth. I can see how a steady diet of these babies could lead to a nutritional nightmare.)

Also good were Andrew Sullivan's "The He Hormone" about the phenomenon of testosterone, and Jacques Leslie"s "Running Dry" which is about the mixed blessing (and ultimate failure) of damming rivers, and the present and future crisis in the supply of fresh water.

There is a sprinkling of rather ordinary pieces by scientific heavyweights, John Archibald Wheeler, Ernst Mayr, Stephen Jay Gould, and Freeman J. Dyson, which are collected here perhaps as much for the prestige they lend to this volume as for the value of the essays. But you be the judge.

The interesting articles by Joel Achenbach and Robert L. Park, "Life Beyond Earth" and "Welcome to Planet Earth," respectively, serve well as introductions to their recently published books, Captured by Aliens: The Search for Life and Truth in a Very Large Universe (1999), and Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud (2000), again, respectively.

Bottom line: this eminently accessible collection is well worth the candle.

Even though astronomer Timothy Ferris edited this collection of 2001 science articles, the emphasis is on biological rather than physical sciences. Some of the essays describe the way science is done, and the ways that ignorance or politics can interfere with its results.

I wish this book could have chronicled the progressive triumph of science over superstition and bureaucratic weirdness. Instead, Helen Epstein's, "The Mystery of AIDS in South Africa" shows what happens when a government backs an unproven theory on the cause of HIV infection. Another essay by Robert L. Park offers a scientific (or at least, sane) solution to a fantasy beloved of Americans: "Welcome to Planet Earth" tells the true story of what happened at Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 (there actually was a secret government project).

A couple of essays struck me as inspired silliness. Stephen Jay Gould's "Syphilis and the Shepherd of Atlantis" illuminates Fracastoro's Virgilian ode to "Syphilis sive morbus Gallicus," also known as the Spanish Disease, English Disease, Neapolitan Disease, and 'Treponema pallidum.' Andrew Sullivan's "The He Hormone" was not written to be silly--the author was taking testosterone to combat the fatigue of an HIV infection--but it did very much remind me of the crowing scene in "Peter Pan."

In "Running Dry," Jacques Leslie chronicles the unassailable fact that we are running out of fresh water. Although this essay was written in 2000, it seems particularly relevant to this summer of ferocious drought and wildfire. The author develops a somber case against our current dam-building and irrigation processes.

However, "Running Dry" wasn't the book's most shocking essay--at least for me, since I was already aware of the fresh water crisis. The shocker was "The Virus and the Vaccine" by Debbie Bookchin and Jim Schumacher. Anyone who is over the age of forty might want to read this article, which was originally published in "The Atlantic Monthly." Here is why it is so interesting:

"A breakthrough in the war against polio had come in the early 1950s, when Jonas Salk took advantage of a new discovery: monkey kidneys could be used to culture the abundant quantities of polio virus necessary to mass-produce a vaccine. In 1960 Bernice Eddy, a government researcher, discovered that when she injected hamsters with the kidney mixture on which the vaccine was cultured, they developed tumors...The cancer-causing virus was soon isolated by other scientists and dubbed SV40..."

(Incidentally, Bernice Eddy's superiors tried to suppress her discovery. She was eventually demoted and lost her laboratory. But by 1963, laboratories stopped using monkey kidneys to produce polio vaccine.)

The SV40 virus was presumed harmless to humans, and no further investigations were done until 1993 when Michele Carbone, an Italian pathologist, decided to research the origins of mesothelioma, a rare and deadly cancer of the mesothelial cells in the lining of the chest and lung.

Asbestos exposure was linked to mesothelioma, which takes twenty to forty years to develop-- but Dr. Carbone also wondered if the cancer might also be caused by SV40.

Read "The Virus and the Vaccine" to learn the results of Dr. Carbone's research--especially if you were vaccinated for polio between 1955 and 1963. In fact, read all of the articles in this collection. They were written to hold the attention of lay readers like me, and most of them chronicle darn interesting science.

If you are indeed one of those people, you'd better not read this book. Nearly every page confronts you with a new reality. In some essays you'll have your nose forcibly rubbed in it. But don't despair, even with some of the grim pictures presented here, nearly all contain some message of hope, as well. Timothy Ferris has assembled an impressive array of science writing covering topics ranging from quantum physics to the water you drink. There's something here for everyone, but read them all, new doors may open for your mind. And, typically with Ferris, he begins the collection in an unexpected way - a poem from John Updike. Who but Updike could produce sensitive, compelling verse about transparent sea animals?

Examining the universe is an overwhelming challenge. Galaxies, stars, gas clouds, planets - the images appear almost daily. But what about the stuff we can't see? Michael Turner, an astronomer with impressive narrative skills, describes his quest for "dark matter," the mysterious stuff that may be impeding the expansion of the cosmos. He notes that the "missing mass" often credited with explaining why the universe isn't evolving the way we once thought, is a misnomer: "It's the light, not the mass, that's missing." Turner's explanation of what's actually happening will surprise the reader. In another essay, matter that isn't "dark," but still is behaving in unexpected ways is explained by Erik Asphaug. Asteroids, those little worlds cohabiting the solar system with us, are revealing their secret lives.

Other lives are revealed here, as well. Mandrills, a primate of bizarre appearance, also turn out to have a bizarre lifestyle. Just as we were all growing accustomed to the image of "alpha" males in the baboon and ape worlds, mandrills have evolved a unique feminist society. In Central Africa, Natalie Angier encountered huge troops of mandrills, all female. Males are relegated to a mostly "monastic" life - a pattern seen in only one other of the 225 primate species. Life at a more fundamental level is examined by Stephen Hall's account of stem cell research.

Life's condition today and its prospects for tomorrow are the topic of other essays. Greg Critser presents a grim picture of American eating habits; the "obesity epidemic" sweeping society. Which Americans are overweight and why? Critser's analysis offers some unexpected answers. Health is a concern for any people, and those who seek to restore health are too often unknown and unheralded. Helen Epstein examines the history of combating AIDS in South Africa where questions of health become interspersed with international economics and local politics. Health issues at local levels are examined in the most powerful
essay in the collection. Tracy Kidder follows "The Good Doctor" on his rounds. Paul Farmer's patients, however, are not restricted to a local hospital or clinic. He travels from Boston to Haiti, Cuba to Peru, even to Siberia as he intently seeks to restore the afflicted to health. And, incidentally, to petition the affluent for support in his work. When entreaty fails, he calls on a talent for deviousness a spy would envy. He's still out there working and he still needs your support. Find out who he is from this essay and why you should favour his requests.

There are too many issues and ideas in this collection to impart them all here. The quote acting as the title of this review comes from the person in charge of water conservation for the fastest growing metropolis in America - Las Vegas. Turn to Jacques Leslie's article to learn why that city may well lack water within the next five years. Your throat may turn dry as you read, but you will hesitate to run to the kitchen for a brimming glassful of water. Instead, you may find yourself prowling the house to stop any dripping taps. You can close the taps, but if you read this magnificent collection of essays, you will be opening your mind. If you're not afraid of reality and are willing to confront it, buy and enjoy this book. It's a treasure.

This book is an excellent choice if you are looking for an easy-to-read history of the development of particle physics in the twentieth century. The book almost reads like a novel. The authors lead us on a tour of the most critical breakthroughs from the discovery of the electron to that of the top quark. Each episode describes not only the physics but also provides interesting insights into the physicists who made the contributions. It is a great diary of man's attempts to discover the smallest components of matter.

This book has proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the telling of the story of 20th century fundamental physics is a task that should not be entrusted to physicists. No, it appears a journalist and a philosopher are not only able to bring the story to life in a way that almost all physics text books fail to do, but at the same time to never lose sight of the important scientific issues.

I thought that I understood these issues well, having been a researcher in the area myself until 1987, but I have to report that they filled embarrassingly large gaps in my knowledge, particularly in relation to experiments, including in subjects that I used to teach to undergraduates.

I would recommend this book to anyone, but most of all to those who call themselves practitioners in the subject, to remind them of how, if at all, what they do fits in to the bigger picture, and also to remind them, to quote Murray Gell Mann (who was probably quoting someone else at the time), that "the best instrument that a theoretician has is his waste paper basket". As the mathematical tangents that theoreticians have gone off on in the last twenty years get ever more bizarre and disconnected from reality, I fully expect this to be full to overflowing soon.

One of the consolations of being a graduate student at a big ten university is having marvellous libraries at your disposal. I picked this one up two years ago in one of my favorite sections: general physics and biography of physicists. This book gives a clear account of how we got from the physics of the turn of the centry, when some wag suggested all that was left to do was to measure constants to the next decimal place, to today where... uh... gee, it looks like we are stuck in the same bind again! But what a century it has been. It was a treat to see how the problems of the "ultraviolet catastrophe" (quantization of light), X-rays and other radiation (atomic structure), and the non-existance of the aether (relativity) spawned whole new areas of inquiry. The interesting thing is that we have indeed come full circle... probing nature to provide support for the "Theories of Everything" will either require ingenuity and precision in measurement that defies belief, or accelerators far beyond our ability (let alone will!) to build. Meanwhile, are there any small, nagging inconsistancies lying about that will provide rich fodder for the next generation? But that is a tale for a book yet to be written. Until then, if you want the low down on 20C physics, this is an excellent place to start. The authors give especially warm and entrancing accounts of their interviews with some of the movers and shakers in the field that give a nice helping of human color to what could have been much too dry a book.

Ferris is a man with the gift to make subjects, dry in most writers' hands, fascinating. For the first time, I came to understand a difficult subject matter that I had not fully understood from prior reading material (ie, Hawking, among others). Two examples: The expansion of space itself as a cause for a star's movement away from us at a speed that reflects its distance; the Big Bang.

He writes in an intimate style that conveys a sense of drama and makes for enjoyable reading.

My one problem came at the end chapters where, arguing entirely from a Western philosophical approach, he attempts to make sense of it all by discussing the ultimate cause and issues of God's existence and role. Here, I think, he fails, and a reader is more intelligently served by an Eastern approach to physics from Zukov's "The Dancing Wu Li Masters." Aristotle can explain Newton, but the paradox of Physics from Einstein on can best be understood philosophically using ideas inherent in Eastern understandings of the transcendent.

I took a short, on-line course in cosmology this past month for which Timothy Ferris' book, The Whole Shebang, was the required text. Although I have a strong interest in physics and cosmology, I am by no means what I would call "good" at it. With only a rudimentary understanding of things like quantum mechanics, relativity physics and string theory, I still found the text readable. I felt that it was clearly enough written for the lay person that I was able to recommend it to a friend with little physics background who had enquired about the subject. This was especially the case as the text covers almost every aspect of cosmology, even in its final two chapters the question of God and the universe.

Covered also are the concepts of the speed of light and "seeing" the past of the universe, the expansion of the universe and the question of its fate, the first few moments of the universe and the creation of matter, the possibility of other universes, the possibility of other dimensions beyond the four we experience, the evolution of the large scale structures of the universe, the anthropic cosmological principle, and for those with a special interest in the topic of religion and philosophy vis a vie physics and cosmology, a discussion of God and the universe. Although there are several books which give a more in depth account of each of these topics, this one is an excellent compendium, which is probably why it was chosen as the text for the class.

The bibliographic notes to the text are all a little old, being mostly primary sources. This is good from the historical perspective, as it makes the reader aware of the underlying research in support of the author's text, who did it, what it was, and when it was done. However, it doesn't give the reader many of the more current titles with which to follow up his/her own interests.

All in all a good starting point.

This book is a must for anyone interested in the history of the universe. It gives a detailed description of the predominant models of the universe presently used by scientists (with the exception of Superstring theory). It also goes in depth into the factors that come into play which determine why astronomers and physicists think the way they do about the origin & evolution of the cosmos. This book covers much the same material as Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History In Time" but I think Ferris' book is a bit more lucid and easy to read. His writing style is also not as dry as Hawking's. This is certainly not the only cosmology text out there, but I believe it's one of the best. People interested in this book should also consider purchasing the PBS Home Video "The Creation Of The Universe" (also available at Amazon.com) which is hosted by Ferris.