The physics book

Readers who want to know more about physics but are intimidated by the subject's complexity will want to turn to The Physics Book, which explores 80 key laws and theories of physics, focusing on their historical development and the people behind the ideas, rather than on challenging mathematical formulas. Content is organized into five themes--measurement and motion, energy and matter, electricity and magnetism, nuclear and particle physics, and relativity and the universe--with each containing 10--18 subtopics. These subtopics are discussed in one to four pages, emphasizing graphically appealing sidebars that include brief biographies, time lines, diagrams, images, or historical paintings. Overall, the effective layout allows readers to take in either smaller or larger bits of information. Other features include a directory of biographies for 35 key figures not fully covered in the topical areas and a glossary of more than 100 terms. This work succeeds at making physics interesting and accessible to the layperson, though some topics, like string theory, are not quite served by the relatively simple explanations. Still, this book is well suited to all public and school libraries.