PETIT POINT: A CANDID PORTRAIT ON THE ABERRATIONS OF SCIENCE

In this fascinating book, Nobel Prize winner Pierre-Gilles de Gennes wittily captures the lives of personalities from both the academic and the industrial world in delightful bite-size stories. Most of the characters in this collection are like those in Aesop's fables, but in modern-day research settings. The book provides a critical account of aberrations (fortunately rare) of the scientific community. Many lessons can be drawn from the stories. For the young researcher, this book is like a telescope: for seeing other human beings beyond his or her laboratory. For the administrator, this book is like a microscope: for seeing inside the human beings huge and complex structures. However, like Aesop's fables, you would not offer the book as a gift to anyone other than a close and wise friend.Petit Point is not a book to be devoured in a single sitting. It is one to be savored and reflected upon -- it shows what the world may be like and what we ourselves may become. It is like a mirror -- to be visited from time to time.

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes is a professor at the College de France.