How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog: Photoshop Contest

It’s now officially February, and the release date for How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog is only a few weeks off– the official release date is Feb. 28. Of course, I’ve got a copy already: If you would like a copy of your very own, you can either wait until the release, or take… Continue reading How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog: Photoshop Contest

It’s a Real Book!

I was going to write something about the politics of scientific publishing, but instead, I want to focus on what’s really important in modern publishing: That’s right, I got a couple of early copies of How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog in the mail this morning. It’s a real book, with pages and everything…… Continue reading It’s a Real Book!

End of Year Self-Promotion

I will eventually do a “Year in Blog” post with a bunch of links to top posts and so on, but not until the year is actually over. At the moment, I’m too busy prepping next term’s class to do all the link chasing. That doesn’t mean I can’t engage in a little self-promotion, though.… Continue reading End of Year Self-Promotion

Superlative Science Books

Three quick items relating to science in book form: 1) It’s that time of year again when every media outlet of any consequence puts out a “Year’s Best {Noun}” list, and John Dupuis is checking the lists for science books so you don’t have to. It looks like a pretty reasonable year for science in… Continue reading Superlative Science Books

The Infinity Puzzle by Frank Close

One of the things that is sometimes very frustrating (to me, at least) about popular physics books is that they rush very quickly through the physics that we already know, in order to spend time talking about wildly speculative ideas. This not only gives some of these books a very short shelf life, as their… Continue reading The Infinity Puzzle by Frank Close

The Physics Book by Clifford Pickover

It’s hard to go more than a couple of days without seeing another “imminent death of publishing” article somewhere, predicting the ultimate triumph of ebooks, There’s one category of books that I expect to remain safe for the foreseeable future, though, namely books that are specifically constructed to be aesthetically pleasing. In other words, coffee-table… Continue reading The Physics Book by Clifford Pickover

The Manga Guide to the Universe by Kenji Ishikawa, Kiyoshi Kawabata, and Verte Corp.

I’m still getting back up to speed with the blog, as well as the huge backlog of stuff I’ve read during the past few months when I was too busy to blog. Thus, I am semi-officially proclaiming this Book Review Week. I’ll post one review a day of books I was sent by publishers looking… Continue reading The Manga Guide to the Universe by Kenji Ishikawa, Kiyoshi Kawabata, and Verte Corp.

Reinventing Discovery by Michael Nielsen

This coming June will mark ten years since I started this blog (using Blogger on our own domain– here’s the very first post) and writing about physics on the Internet. This makes me one of the oldest science bloggers in the modern sense– Derek Lowe is the only one I know for sure has been… Continue reading Reinventing Discovery by Michael Nielsen

How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog: The Cover

I’m looking at an email from my editor when Emmy wanders by the computer, sniffing around just in case a crumb of food has fallen on the floor in the last five minutes. “Hey,” I say, “Come here and look at this.” “Look at what?” “This:” “It’s the cover for my new book.” “A-hem.” “OK,… Continue reading How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog: The Cover

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann

Back when I reviewed Mann’s pop-archaeology classic 1491, I mentioned that I’d held off reading it for a while for fear that it would be excessively polemical in a “Cortez the Killer” kind of way. Happily, it was not, so when I saw he had a sequel coming out, I didn’t hesitate to pick it… Continue reading 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann