I was Googling for “How to Teach Physics to Your Dog” last night, to check whether a review of said book that I know is coming has been posted yet (side question: Does anybody know a good way to exclude the umpty-zillion versions of Amazon and other sellers from this sort of search? Most of the results are just product pages at one online retailer or another.). The review I was looking for isn’t up yet, but I did find a goodreads page, a nice entry at the Cincinnati public library calling it “abstract science delivered painlessly,” and this pre-publication alert from Library Journal.
“Wait a minute,” you say. “Wasn’t your book in a preup alert back in August?” Yes, yes it was. That’s the cool thing. The new pre-pub alert cites my book in talking about Quantum by Manjit Kumar:
Quantum mechanics, a theory about the nature of matter on the subatomic level that caused a revolution in early 20th-century science, sharply divided Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. We’re still trying to make sense of it today. Here, the founding editor of Prometheus sheds a little light (particles? or waves?) on the subject. Physics is hot right now, with lots of books slated for the coming months, e.g., Chad Orzel’s How To Teach Physics to Your Dog–and this looks like a good foundational book from someone who can talk to nonscientists.
That’s just awesome. Kumar’s book sounds pretty cool, too.
I’ve read Kumar’s book. It is exceptionally good on the history of the subject and has one of the most accurate renditions of the development of the subject I have seen in a popular level book. On the other hand, it is not so hot at explaining the science, i.e. if you are totally new to the subject then I don’t think the explanations are very easy to follow. Therefore, I recommend reading the dog book for the science and Quantum for the history.
With respect to the “side question”, try plugging this into google:
“how to teach physics to your dog” -amazon -borders -barnesandnoble
It seems to eliminate most of the direct seller links, and you can add more -clauses for others to pare down the list even more.