Better Than Hollywood Stars

The Secret Life of Stars by Lisa Harvey-Smith

New York : Thames & Hudson, 2021.

182 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.

     

This is a light (but super informative) read. At times the over-anthropomorphizing of stars is a bit much, but that's the only fault I have with this really good introduction to the wild variety of stars that astronomers and astrophysicists study.

From the sun to massive black holes and all the weird variations in between, this book offers a tempting exploration through what is currently known about stars and also introduces readers to some of the stellar mysteries that astronomers hope to unravel when they get the chance to employ tools like the new Webb telescope. 

Harvey-Smith does a great job explaining some pretty complicated concepts about how stars produce their light and heat and how elements are created in the collapse and explosions of huge stars. I would recommend this to both astronomy fans and to students who are just curious about the stars and current astrophysics.

Stunning Science and a Couple of Stunning Mistakes

The Universe in Your Hand by Christophe Galfard

New York : Flatiron Books, 2017, c2016.

First US edition

386 pages ; 22 cm

Christophe Galfard tries and mostly succeeds in leading the lay reader through the current state of knowledge about cosmology and astrophysics - taking the reader through Newtonian, Einsteinian and quantum physics along the way. It's an ambitious undertaking, and I think Galfard succeeds better than most at creatively introducing the reader to mind-bending worlds of quantum fields and some of the truly bizarre quandaries and realms of modern cosmology - dark matter, dark energy, and string theory.  

His was one of the first books I've read about quantum fields where I started to just appreciate and even accept the way in which our "common sense" understandings of the world (which works fine on most of the scales we evolved in) are just not capable of reckoning with the way particles are manifestations of the quantum fields. It's heady stuff, and I'll probably reread those sections later to try and take in more of what they offer. Given the positives about this book, I have to qualify it with the following observation.

There is such a glaring mistake early in the book that I'm a bit befuddled that editors and early readers didn't check it. Galfard describes the future demise of our sun as being one where it "explodes, firing all the matter it was made of into outer space" (6). A while later he describes this ending as "spreading into space all the atoms the Sun has forged throughout its life while creating some more - the heaviest ones of all, such as gold" (19).  This was so unlike any scenarios of the sun's demise I had ever read that I thought maybe I had misread previous books and explanations - or that the latest science was radically different. I searched books and online astronomy sites, and so far, I've found nothing to indicate that the sun will blow away all its mass or that a star of the sun's size can forge anything heavier than carbon in its last stages. From what I've read it will end up as a white dwarf that will then last for billions and billons of years as it slowly cools. 

So I'll suggest the book for its navigation through quantum realities and string theory, but hedge my praise based on the beginning of the book.

       

Really Big, Really Small - and Just Right

The Cosmic Mystery Tour: a High Speed Journey Through Time and Space by Nicholas Mee

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2019.     

207 p. : ill. (chiefly col.) ; 21 cm.

This was an ambitious little book.  I say "little" in that 207 p. is fairly brief for an attempt to introduce the wonderous scope of current science about forces, particles, fields, gravity, time, the elements, supernovae, galaxies and - well - the whole universe! The book looks at the very small and the very large - from fermions and bosons to a supermassive black hole with an estimated  mass of 8 trillion suns (yes, that's 8 TRILLION!) 

What I liked about The Cosmic Mystery Tour is that it succeeds in being readable, interesting and keeping up a brisk pace.  After reading it, I found myself ruminating on the vast expanses of the cosmos, along with the strange and remarkable subatomic world that is so hard to fathom.

In spite of a few parts that are just hard to follow (the explanation of the fundamental particles being one of these) most of the book does a great job of being very accessible to the lay reader.

If I had a student ask about a good overview of modern science regarding the universe/cosmos, I'd definitely recommend this little gem.

More Tangled Than a Chromosome

She Has Her Mother's Laugh: the Powers. Perversions and Potential of Heredity  by Carl Zimmer

[New York, N.Y.] : Dutton, [2019]

xiv, 656 p. ; 24 cm. 

This was a long read and - to be honest - a bit above my pay-grade so to speak.  I love science and this is written for lay readers, but the subject matter is pretty darn complicated.  However, it is readable, super interesting and worth the effort.

Though I was pretty good in math and science as a student, the intricacies of probability and statistics always gave me headaches. So, it's no wonder that some of the complexities of inheritance are a bit foggy to me.  That being said, there is a lot that anyone can get from this fine science book.

I think the most interesting take-away from this book is its deep dive into what "heredity" actually means and how the concept is far more messy than many of us think of it.  Zimmer wants us to see that inheritance (even genetic inheritance) is far more complicated than the sum of what we each get from our parents, grandparents, great grandparents, etc. He notes that there is in essence a "heredity" that occurs within each of us as our cells divide and divide and divide - both in their determined specifications and also with accumulated mutations of those cells. He also points out how unusual occurrences such as an individual who is the combination of two fused zygotes can really challenge our ideas of genetic certainty (e.g. a mother whose children do not test as being her children!) He also explores how environment can affect heredity. 

The book also takes a good long look at what we inherit culturally and what an impact it has.  Finally the book really goes into the cutting edge (literally) technologies that genetic engineers are using/developing.  The hardest for me to get are CRISPR (gene cutting DNA code discovered in bacteria and other archea) and gene drives (which spread traits through a species far more than natural reproduction/inheritance).

I read this book because it is one a student requested for the library when they were one of our yearly scholars.  It is a good read, but one that would likely challenge all but the most scientific minded readers.

      

Fallout

Chernobyl's Wild Kingdom: Life in the Dead Zone by Rebecca L. Johnson
Minneapolis : Twenty-First Century Books, [2015]
64 p. : ill. (some col.), col. maps ; 27 cm.

As most people know, there was a devastating nuclear plant disaster in April 1986 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in what was then the Soviet Union (but is now in Ukraine).  There have been some stories over the years about the city Pripyat, which was rapidly evacuated a few days after the disaster and remains abandoned.  But this book looks at the South Carolina sized exclusion zone (which includes the former city of Pripyat), with a focus on the abundance of wildlife in this area where very few humans live.

Remarkably, in spite of some very high levels of radiation in the zone, wildlife is thriving, and what makes this book really engaging is that the author examines two contrary conclusions reached by scientists studying the zone.  One scientist and his colleagues study small mammals like mice and voles and have concluded that the long term exposure to low (but dangerous) levels of radiation have made these animals healthier and more resistant.  Another team of scientists who study barn swallows arrive at the opposite conclusion, noting very high levels of mutations and tumors in their avian subjects.

The book invites readers to consider both possibilities and provides lots of great information and illustrations about the initial disaster and its decades long after effects.  It gets one thinking about unexpected effects of humanity (and the absence of humanity) on the environment.  It had me thinking about the Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge (where the US made nuclear weapons) and the Korean DMZ.  And this book does all this in just sixty-four short pages.  Not bad.

Brilliant Fade

Tesla: Inventor of the Modern by Richard Munson
New York : W.W. Norton & Co., [2018]   
306 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.

I've wanted to read about Nikolai Tesla for a while now.  Someone told me how Tesla had developed plans for harnessing and distributing low-cost (if not free) energy - and so had his career quashed by powerful oil/gas interests and even had his papers seized by the government after he died.  Given Tesla's revolutionary inventions and discoveries, I had to wonder if there was something to this.

This biography does a great job of conveying just how brilliant and visionary Tesla was in both his thinking and his development of applied science.  He is the towering figure behind the modern use of electricity in industry and in its wide distribution.  By figuring out how to harness and use alternating current (AC) through generators and AC motors, he triumphed over the Edison devotees of direct current.

However, much of his life was spent pursuing fruitless dreams of using high-frequency electric current to send and receive wireless energy and signals through the earth.  In spite losing himself in the pursuit of these earthbound visions, he also developed the airborne transmission of signals and has been credited with the invention of radio - though Marconi became its most famous developer and inventor.

This biography led me to believe that there is not a lot of substance to the belief that special interests shut down Tesla's potential.  Instead his own visionary brilliance seems to have trumped a more practical approach that would have greatly benefited Tesla.  He was terrible with money and contracts and did not reap the fabulous riches that his work should have earned for him.  Nevertheless, he did have years of great fame and huge financial backing, but was unable to develop that into a lifelong success with research and income.

All in all, it is a fascinating biography that I would highly recommend to anyone interested in late 19th century science and technology - especially electricity and wireless communication.
   

Super Tiny, Super Big

Smash! : Exploring the Mysteries of the Universe with the Large Hadron Collider by Sara Latta
Minneapolis : Graphic Universe, [2017]
72 p. : chiefly ill. ; 24 cm.

This little comic book is more of an hors d'oeuvre than an entree, but there's nothing wrong with that.  Weighing in at a mere 72 pages, and managing to convey the amazing science of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) without getting bogged down in its wild complexities, Latta has managed to create a work that should whet the reader's appetite to know more.   It did mine!

Though the story-line is a bit corny (a little youngish for high school) the science is admirable.  In one part of the book, in the space of just a couple pages she manages to cover most of the basics of the standard model: the six "flavors" of quarks,  six kinds of leptons, the four fundamental forces and the bosons associated with them - and, of course, the most famous triumph of the LHC, the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.

It's nice to have a brief, very accessible book to recommend to a student who is not deep into advanced science, and yet wants to know about particle physics.  If you know such a student, Smash! might be just what they need.

Wolves Where?

A Dog in the Cave: The Wolves Who Made Us Human by Kay Frydenborg
Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017.
ix, 246 p. : ill. (some col.), maps (some col.) ; 24 cm. 

The details (pages, illus, etc) above are for the print version which we have in our library, though the version I read was the eBook edition through the Axis360 collection that our library provides. Yes, that means I read it on my little cell phone - and it's not a bad experience.

This book offers a lot to think about.  Probably the most interesting thing about A Dog in the Cave, is how it really got me to see how incredibly unique the human-dog relationship is in the history of animals on the planet.  Here the author introduces us to the mutually beneficial relationship between two sentient apex-predators and how that relationship has shaped - though evolution - who we both are.  It's a pretty crazy thing to think about. 

A for instance?  Well, consider that humans and dogs both experience the endorphin pleasure in their brains from gazing at each other.  Or consider that unlike the extremely intelligent wolf, only dogs can solve a guessing game by following the glance cues of humans.  Essentially, Frydenborg is arguing that by entering into a cooperative alliance with humans some 40,000 years ago the original wild proto-dog wolf began evolving traits that made it more suitable to be with humans, AND humans began evolving traits that make us ideal companions to dogs.  Pretty neat stuff.

There's a lot of ground that gets covered in this book and anyone interested in dogs, paleontology, evolution or human-animal relationships will find something to enjoy here.

Gut Feeling

I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong
New York, NY : Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2016.
355 p. : col. ill. ; 24 cm.

I've been telling people about this book since I started reading it a couple weeks ago. It's a great read, introducing the lay reader (i.e me!) to a very broad, complex and contemporary field of scientific research - the microbiome.  As Yong neatly lays out, the study of microorganisms really begins with Leeuwenhoek in the 1660s.  Unfortunately, the study of microbes in the 19th and 20th century focused almost exclusively on the disease-causing pathogens - leading to the overuse of antibiotics and the obsession with trying to shield people from all microbes, instead of just bad effects of some.

What makes Yong's book so fascinating is how he gets the reader to rethink not only the us vs. them attitude toward microbes, but the entire notion that there is an us and a them when it comes to living in a world of microbes.  He convincingly shows that almost all living creatures are the sum of the complex and intricate relationships between ourselves and the trillions of microbes that live within and without us and affect us for good and ill.  Given that each of us contains trillions of microbes and could not function without them, it starts to dawn on the reader that not only does one contain multitudes, but perhaps one IS those multitudes.

The other achievement of Yong is to navigate both cover and convey the wide ranges of research and investigation into the microbiome - from the microbes that make deep sea life possible near hydrothermal vents, to attempts at reintroducing microbes into hospitals and public spaces with the goal of having healthy microbiomes instead of sterile environments.

Like Planet of Viruses, the book I read earlier this school year, this is a science book I'll be recommending.

Big Ideas, Little Book

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli
New York, N.Y. : Riverhead Books, 2016.
86 p. : ill. ; 20 cm.

Seven Brief Lessons is one of those lovely little science books that is at once accessible to the lay reader, but also introduces concepts and ideas that leave you more curious (and perplexed even) than when you started.  How confused or satisfied you are after finishing the book will somewhat depend on your knowledge of, and familiarity with scientific concepts.  But even a science novice can come away with a lot to ponder after reading this book.

Rovelli wants to touch on some of the most astounding and important concepts in physics that have developed in the last 115 years.  He starts out with Einstein by mentioning his "Special Theory of Relativity" which dealt with the fluid nature of time, and then proceeds to expound on what he considers one of science's preeminent masterpieces, Einstein's "General Theory of Relativity."  It is this theory that establishes space as a field that is shaped by gravity.

Rovelli continues on in his lessons to discuss quanta, the nature of the cosmos, the search for a unifying theory that will connect the macro understanding of gravity and space to the nearly incomprehensible phenomena of quantum physics at the subatomic level.  His book spirals off into ruminations on heat, time, and the "granular" nature of space itself.

He brings his book to a close with a meditation on the human condition and its place fully within the matrix of nature.

Less a book of answers - or even a summary of where physics stands - this book is more of a jumping off point for pondering the wondrous and nearly unbelievable nature of what humans know and still don't know about the universe we find ourselves in.

Creator and Destroyer

Influenza Virus - graphic from the CDC.

Planet of Viruses by Carl Zimmer
Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2015.
x, 122 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 22 cm.

This wonderful little book shows how science books for the lay reader should be written.  It's smart, intense, surprising, accessible, and interesting to a fault.   Not bad for 122 pages!

Of course, all of us know something about viruses - colds, flu, HIV, and rabies are well-known viral diseases - but ask someone what a virus is, how it works, and you are likely to get some significant head scratching.  With this book, Carl Zimmer helps you get a basic understanding of viruses: how prolific they are, how strangely they straddle the border between the what is alive and inanimate, and how much all life on earth is inextricably bound up with these extremely small (with a few exceptions) carries of genetic code.

Planet of Viruses does a wonderful job of revealing the workings of viruses in manageable chapters covering topics such as the common cold, influenza, HIV, HPV, and viruses in the oceans (yes it is teeming with them!).  The book may leave you with more questions than answers, but it will make you intensely aware that we really do live on a planet of viruses - and will hopefully stoke your curiosity to know more about these deadly, dangerous, and life preserving entities.

This is a science book I will highly recommend.

Big Hopes for the Very Tiny

The Quantum Age by Brian Clegg
London : Icon, 2015.
vi, 282 p. : ill. ; 20 cm.

I'm not sure why Clegg's Quantum Age just didn't hit the sweet spot for me.  I like science and I like trying to wrap my mind around quantum concepts. I guess that there were several concepts that I never felt were covered well enough, and therefore when they'd get referred to later - I'd find myself still somewhat confused.  Some of these important concepts were tunneling, superposition, decoherence, entanglement, and Cooper's pairs (electrons).

I still muddled through the book and found parts of it interesting enough. The book does help the reader see not only how quantum physics underlies many day to day processes - for example anything involving light - but how modern science has applied it's knowledge of quantum physics to create computing as we know it, and such medical technologies as MRIs. He also points toward the many potential breakthroughs that seem to be on the horizon - practical superconductivity, quantum computing, and advanced encryption to name just some.

I'm glad I read the book, but I can't say it is one that I'll be highly recommending.  I wouldn't discourage a student from checking it out, but I'll definitely be on the lookout for something that I find even better.    

The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
New York : Henry Holt and Co., 2014.
319 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.

Let's face it; mass extinction is a depressing topic, but Kolbert manages to make it interesting, humane and compelling.  She does this by not only presenting a general outlines of what the 6th extinction is, and where it fits in the history of science - but also by presenting it in understandable case studies and examples from the past and present.  Also, when she focuses on current extinction events - e.g. Panamanian golden frogs, Sumatran Rhinos, and coral reefs - she travels to the place where this event is happening and joins in with researchers and scientists.  The results are moving and interesting vignettes that help any curious person understand both the specific and fascinating events of mass extinction, but also get a taste of the terrible potentials that they hold for the future of the planet and our species.

I'm pleased that this book won a 2015 Pulitzer Prize - it is well deserved and will bring new readers to this critical topic.   I would also recommend this book to any young adult reader interested in the topic or interested in good science writing in general.

Goodbye Cruel World

from Scotese.com - an awesome source of paleomaps from earth history

The Great Extinctions by Norman MacLeod
Buffalo, N.Y. : Firefly Books, 2013
208 p. : ill. (chiefly col.), col. maps ; 26 cm.

Confession: I love books about deep time, especially about the earth.  This is a book that satisfied my hankering for science books about the very, very distant past.  And regarding the deep past, what could be more interesting than those rare great extinctions in which enough conditions - sea levels, climate, extraterrestrial impact, volcanism - occurred together that a dramatic percentage of all life on earth was wiped out?  The topic is even more compelling when one thinks about the possibility that we are living at the start of the 6th great extinction event.  However, I'd have to give this book a mixed - though mostly positive - review.

The strengths of this book are it's organization - each great extinction event is presented chronologically and maps, charts, and knowns and unknowns about the event are presented in much the same order.  I also really appreciated the number of illustations and maps in the book.  The author is able to cover a lot of territory in the book and make a lot of it accessible.  A lot, but not all of it - and that is my main critique of this book for a high school collection.  There are times where the data and explanations are very complex and difficult to follow and will turn off and frustrate the general reader.  Therefore I would recommend this book to students researching the science of the great extinctions or students who are avid science readers; the general reader is probably going to get bogged down long before finishing this book.

Hi Tech Guilt

A version of Think Tank 1's cover from the Top Cow Website

Think Tank 1 by Matt Hawkins
Los Angeles : Top Cow Productions, Inc., 2013
1 v. (unpaged) : chiefly ill. ; 26 cm.

David Loren has a guilty conscience.  He is the main character of this new graphic novel series from Matt Hawkins and Rashan Ekedal, and he's begun to question his role as a super-intelligent weapons developer for a Pentagon think tank that recruited him with a full scholarship to Cal Tech when he was just 14.  

In the 10 years since that time he has begun to question the value of what he is doing (reflecting on the human toll that his lethal creations have) and he wants out.  Unfortunately for David, he's pretty much a prisoner on the high-security base where he lives and works.  But given his technical wizardry, he decides he's going to escape - one way or another.

The story is fast-paced, exciting, interesting and ends with a dramatic twist that sets the reader up for the next installment of Think Tank.  Not bad for a debut graphic novel.

I really appreciated the author's scientific and ethical depth.  The novel ends with a section that explains some of the terms and references found in the story (e.g. DARPA, Einstein quotes, etc.) and contains references to some of the real-world hi-tech weaponry currently being developed by the Pentagon and its private contractors.  A good read for the tech-savvy, current-events aware fan of graphic novels.

For more insight into Think Tank take a look at this interview with Matt Hawkins, or this review of Think Tank 1.

Awesome Science, Awesome Earth

From the European Space Agency

The Story of Earth: the first 4.5 billion years, from stardust to living planet by Robert Hazen
New York, N.Y. : Penguin Books, 2013.
306 p. : ill. ; 21 cm. 

I love a good science book, and this one did not disappoint.  As Nancy Curtis of Library Journal writes, "Hazen has a gift for explaining science in lay terms."  He is able to convey a lot of rather intricate and tricky scientific knowledge and concepts about the formation of the earth and its features, but in ways that get the reader to visualize and contemplate the vast changes that our planet has undergone.  His book helps explain the way in which earth's familiar geology is intricately tied up with the existence of life - in other words, without life, the earth would be a very different place geologically. Specifically, Hazen posits that most of the minerals found on earth would not exist without the chemical changes in the land, oceans, and atmosphere that life sets in motion.

For me the most exciting part of reading The Story of Earth is how it provokes thinking and imagining the nearly incomprehensible stretches of time that make up both earth's history (that 4.5 billion years) and its future (about another 4 billion years).  I think I must be like most humans and feel that a lifetime of 75-100 years is a long time, or that ancient  history (human, that is!) 2,000-3,000 years in past is immense.  But the extent of deep time really is breathtaking - the thought that life was present by the 1 billionth year of earth's existence and yet carried on for another billion year before getting the knack of photosynthesis is really incredible. Of course it was the recognition of deep time that helped Darwin see the potential for truly radical changes of organisms - given only minute changes at any one time.

I will definitely be recommending this book for any students looking for a good science read.

Evolution Even a Caveman Could Understand

The Rough Guide to Evolution by Mark Pallen
London ; New York : Rough Guides, 2009.
vi, 346 p. : ill., maps ; 20 cm. 

This is a wonderful book - interesting, comprehensive, thoroughly researched, and engaging.  It serves as a great introduction to Charles Darwin, to the principles of evolution, and to the many ways in which Darwin's groundbreaking work has shaped modern intellectual and cultural life.

Frankly, the most refreshing thing about this book is that it demolishes the spurious and intellectually bankrupt tenets of creationism and creationism's reemergence under the guise of "Intelligent Design." Pallen meticulously reviews the veritable ocean of scientific evidence supporting evolution - showing clearly that that those who deny evolution have as much scientific standing as someone who believes the sun circles the earth. The book also does an admirable job of detailing how the majority of religious thinkers and leaders accept the factual nature of evolution and do not see it as a threat to theism. Sadly, the book points out that it is in the United States that anti-evolution ignorance has developed it's deepest roots.

The book succeeds in explaining in clear language the current understandings of evolutionary theory, but the explanations are not always simple or easy to follow.  I found myself having to read and reread sections on cladistics and genetics.

The book is really enjoyable in that it is broken into sections that can be read solely for their content, e.g. Human Origins.  I would recommend this book to any student curious about Darwin, evolution, human origins, and creationism - or to any student researching these topics.

Briefer for Busier Times

I'm not sure how many years it's been since I read Stephen Hawking's phenomenal best seller - A Brief History of Time.  It was published in 1988, and I'm guessing I read it at some time in the mid 1990s.  I recall finding parts of it really fascinating, but much of it a bit overwhelming - so I was really pleased to see that Hawking and collaborator, Leonard Mlodinow teamed up to reissue a revised, renamed and somewhat easier version of the classic.

This Briefer History of Time is a great introduction for the lay person, and of course for the interested high school student, to major concepts of cosmology, including the somewhat mind-bending concepts of Einstein's theories of general and special relativity - and the truly mind-blowing and bizarre concepts of quantum and string theory.

I found the inclusion of God in this work to be problematic.  Instead of discussing how current theories relate to beliefs in God, the authors at times seem to just assume - without evidence that God does exist.  Consider this excerpt from a discussion of the search for unified theories:

"Actually, the idea that God might want to change his mind is an example of the fallacy, pointed out by St. Augustine, of imagining God as a being existing in time.  Time is a property only of the universe that God created.  Presumably, He knew what He intended when He set it up!"

And a bit later in the book, in the conclusion they write:

"The question remains, however: how or why were the laws and the initial state of the universe chosen?" ("[C]hosen" seems an odd choice of language here)! 

I think it would have just been better to include a separate chapter on the religious implications of the current state of cosmology, but regardless, the book is still very strong and compelling.

Science Times Ten

The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments by George Johnson
New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
xiv, 192 p. : ill. ; 20 cm.

I enjoy books of science and this one was pretty good. The author has chosen what he considers to be ten experiments that capture the power and aesthetic of the scientific method because of the creative, straightforward and elegant means used to arrive at various scientific conclusions. Experiments range from Galileo's experiments with the constant acceleration of falling objects to Lavoisier's conclusions about oxygen to Galvani's experiments (see the graphic above) with bioelectrical impulses.

My only complaint of the book is that the brevity given to each episode can make them either a bit difficult to appreciate or forgettable. However, the shortness makes the book excellent for on the spot reading and does not require the reader to read the book beginning to end - on the contrary it is an excellent book for sampling a chapter here or there.

Quantum Science Goes to the Dogs

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog
Chad Orzel
New York : Scribner, 2009.
241 p.

Have a student interested in quantum theory? This is not a bad book for that. Orzel uses humor and the shtick of his dog supposedly asking question after question about the fundamentals of quantum theory.

In spite of the book being meant for the lay reader, I still had a lot of difficulty with understanding the author's explanations of wave functions and his attempt to explain decoherence and the idea of infinite universes. But, there is plenty to enjoy in the book and I LOVED his last chapter where he debunks and derides the shameless hucksterism of people like Depak Chopera who use shallow quantum theory mumble-jumble to sell their self-help and self-improvement books.

Other books I've liked that touch on quantum theory are the book You Are Here by Christopher Potter and The Elegant Universe by Brian Green (which is more about super string theories, and yet discusses a lot of quantum theory, too.)