Review by Choice Review
Muller's humorous prose alongside Manfre's adorable illustrations offers an enjoyable approach to learning science. Topics range from contemporary issues like energy production, hybrid cars, and global warming to offbeat issues like the size of the HAL computer featured in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, a computer too large to have functioned. Muller (Univ. of California, Berkeley) uses nonintuitive anecdotes to dissolve held assumptions. For example, organic foods may actually be higher in poisons and carcinogens than foods grown using pesticides because plants without pesticides must develop their own defenses, poisons, and carcinogens to survive predators. Each topic is explained in a few paragraphs. The author suggests examining the illustrations with their captions first, puzzling over them awhile, and then reading the explanatory text. Muller wants to offer "information worth knowing" in a fun, attractive manner, and he wants to demonstrate that many technical issues have a physics connection. A selected bibliography would have been a helpful addition. To delve a little deeper, try Muller's Physics for Future Presidents (CH, Feb'09, 46-3319) or Physics and Technology for Future Presidents (CH, Dec'10, 48-2142). Summing Up; Recommended. General readers. M. Mounts Dartmouth College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Muller distills information from his Physics for Future Presidents (2008) and his university physics course into a lively little book. It's simply laid out: on left-hand pages, there are brief examinations of interesting or little-known facts; on right-hand pages, there are Joey Manfre's humorous illustrations based on those facts. For example, a discussion of the importance of the greenhouse effect it keeps the planet from freezing over is accompanied by a cartoon of a man in a parka saying Happy? to a frozen-solid protester, whose sign reads, End the greenhouse effect. Readers will learn a lot from the book: you can outrun a tsunami; plutonium is 1,000 times less toxic than Botox; antimatter isn't science fiction; organically grown foods have more carcinogens than foods sprayed with artificial pesticides. Oh, and Muller reveals the truth behind the world-famous 1947 crash of those mysterious flying disks in Roswell, New Mexico (it's not what you might think). Very entertaining and very informative a winning combination.--Pitt, David Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
