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| The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science | 
 enlarge | Author: Natalie Angier
Publisher: Mariner Books
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $7.00
You Save: $8.95 (56%)
Buy New/Used from $3.35
Avg. Customer Rating:  (74 reviews)
Sales Rank: 12336
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.8
ISBN: 0547053460
Dewey Decimal Number: 500
EAN: 9780547053462
ASIN: 0547053460
Publication Date: April 3, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
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."
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| Customer Reviews: Read 69 more reviews...
 A Fine Introduction To The Major Areas of Science August 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Sometimes the best explainers of a topic are outsiders or laymen, rather than practitioners in the field. The author isn't a scientist so she can still see complex topics from the layman's viewpoint. This is, simply put, a great book. It covers not only the nuts and bolts of science (what is the doppler effect?) but the philosophy behind science: why the scientific method so excels at explaining our world.
The writing is breezy and not stilted, using metaphors instead of math to explain difficult topics. The chapter on evolutionary biology is my favorite, and covers not only the mechanics of evolution but the controversy, and explains the tenets (and bad reasoning) of the Intelligent Design movement. After reading this chapter it seemed like a veil lifted from my eyes, and I got excited and yelled, "I get it!"
A couple of my favorite quotes:
From the chapter on evolutionary biology: "Natural selection is the force that transforms drift and randomness into the gift of extravagance. It takes the doctrinaire sloth of the second law of thermodynamics, the tendency of every system to get frowzier over time, and hammers it into a magic, all-purpose, purpose-making machine that turns around and breaks entropy at the knees."
From the chapter on astronomy, talking about the search for extraterrestrials: "We are such indefatigable telecommunicators that the world and its 6.5 billion content providers don't feel like enough, and we can't help but wonder, Who else can we call?"
The book is wonderful and definitely is worth reading several times. My only gripes: there is the occasional reference to some current pop culture celebrity, and I think this will make an otherwise timeless book seem dated in a few years. Also I think that the book would have been enhanced by an occasional illustration. For instance, the explanation of the galaxies flying away from each other is much easier understood if you actually see a picture of a balloon with dots on it to represent the galaxies.
 This canon needs another en August 5, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Natalie Angier was mad as heck and wanted some science to go wring a neck. That of her sister, who saw no need, for muse-seeums now that her children were ready for new sceneums. So she wrote and she wrote and came up with a book that should have captured the basics of science in a new look. Alas Natalie spent a lot of time writing about subjects obscure in order to educate the masses toujours.
Too clever by half, she got most of it right, but her writing got in the way- 'twas too trite. Bombeckian prose over and over again, makes for wrinkled nose, over and over again. And over and over again. And again. Every page, sometimes ten.
Not a total waste of time, some good basic science, but at the end of the day, a writing style of annoyance. Add to it some comments that are way too PC, and you have a half a book, not a great one, you see.
Frippery city August 4, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Think of chocolate cake dipped in honey, sprinkled with powdered sugar and then drizzled with maple syrup. Blech!
Apparently, Angier has noted that the world of nonfiction has had to make due without its own version of E. Annie Proulx, and decided to fill that gap herself. (This is not a compliment.)
But I hate to be hard on her, because she is performing a real service, and obviously is quite bright and more than willing to dive into a tough subject and work until she understands it. But if her stated goal is to make the basics of science more accessible to people, why make us read in dread of the next strained metaphor or lame pun? It's hideously distracting.
(For the record, you can't really address a compendium of basic science without mentioning J. Willard Gibbs, America's greatest and most obscure science titan.)
 not amused July 27, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
"Too cute by far" is a better title for a review, but I see it's already taken. If you like Ms Angier's articles in the NY Times, as I usually do, you will be disappointed in this book. If the tone in those articles is as grating as in this book, maybe I didn't notice because they are so much shorter. After 50 pages I was ready to pull my hair out with all the flippant asides.
The Canon July 14, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Don't waste your time or your money. I throw very few books in the garbage, but this one had to go in.
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