The Canon: The Beautiful Basics of Science - Hardcover

Angier, Natalie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571239714 ISBN 13: 9780571239719

Publisher: Faber and Faber, 2008

Synopsis

In this exuberant book, the best-selling author Natalie Angier distills the scientific canon to the absolute essentials, delivering an entertaining and inspiring one-stop science education. Angier interviewed a host of scientists, posing the simple question “What do you wish everyone knew about your field?” The Canon provides their answers, taking readers on a joyride through the fascinating fundamentals of the incredible world around us and revealing how they are relevant to us every day. Angier proves a rabble-rousing, wisecracking, deeply committed tour guide in her irresistible exploration of the scientific process and the basic concepts of physics, chemistry, evolutionary biology, cellular and molecular biology, geology, and astronomy. Even science-phobes will find her passion infectious as she strives "to make the invisible visible, the distant neighborly, the ineffable affable."

About this title

From the Back Cover

With the singular intelligence and exuberance that made Woman an international sensation, Natalie Angier takes us on a whirligig tour of the major scientific disciplines: physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and astronomy. She draws on conversations with hundreds of the world's top scientists and on her own work as a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for the New York Times to create a thoroughly entertaining guide to scientific literacy.

The Canon is vital listening for anyone who wants to understand the great issues of our time—from stem cells and bird flu to evolution and global warming. And it's for every parent who has ever panicked when a child asked how the earth was formed or what electricity is. Angier's sparkling prose and memorable metaphors bring the science to life, reigniting our own childhood delight in discovering how the world works.

About the Author

NATALIE ANGIER writes about biology for the New York Times, where she has won a Pulitzer Prize, the American Association for the Advancement of Science journalism award, and other honors. She is the author of The Beauty of the Beastly, Natural Obsessions, and Woman, named one of the best books of the year by the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, People, National Public Radio, Village Voice, and Publishers Weekly, among others.
A New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist, Woman is “a text so necessary and abundant and true that all efforts of its kind, for decades before and after it, will be measured by it” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Angier lives with her husband and daughter outside of Washington, D.C.

Edition details

• Publisher: Faber and Faber
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0571239714
• ISBN 13: 9780571239719
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 304