A longstanding fan of science, I appreciate Natalie Angier’s attempts in The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science (2007) to enliven the field for a lay audience. At times she even succeeds. Still, I wish her book had more of the sciences’ elegant structure and less of the fluff she so [...]

If you’re willing to bet you’d rather read Dante than Dawkins or listen to Bach before Bohr, Natalie Angier’s The Canon probably won’t change your mind—despite its best efforts. The premise of the book is this: The public doesn’t care for science. We find it more socially refined to go to the opera than to [...]

This is not a book review. It may look like one, or sound like one. Hell, it may even smell like one. But I’m here to tell you, it ain’t. Instead, it’s an explanation of why I could not get through Natalie Angier’s The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science. Have [...]