Book Review: the science book

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The “science book” by National Geographic shows just how ‘incredibly, unbelievably, immeasurably cool’ science is. With a format little changed from countless encyclopaedias, this book provides the reader with a huge expanse of our accumulated knowledge. From star shine to number systems and from behavioural patterns to fracture tectonics, it’s all science and it’s in this book.

This book is perfect as a scholastic reference. It’s clearly sectioned, topics are usually confined to individual pages and a plethora of coloured pictures and diagrams greatly aid a reader’s understanding. The book aims at covering a lot of content, so it has to sacrifice a bit on depth. Nevertheless, the page given to a topic provides current relevance, historical progress and issues for the future. Hence, the reader can easily discover the impact of science upon our forebearers and upon our lives today.

Perhaps surprisingly, the book stands on its own. It has no bibliography, suggested readings or recommendations for web sites. As well, the book is missing any references. So, we have to trust the source which is National Geographic. Given its pedigree, the content is likely accurate and current.

Yet, why would anyone want a book when the Internet is readily available to most schools? The best reason is that this book maintains the same level of detail throughout. Doing a search on the Internet can yield post graduate research papers as well as unreferenced blogs. However, with this book as a reference, there’s the same level of detail for every science topic it presents.

And science is a wonderful topic. With our continual advances, we’re able to fly higher, move faster and dig deeper than ever before. We can understand and better coexist with the life forms surrounding us on this planet and explore for life elsewhere. All this knowledge can easily be at your fingertips with National Geographic’s “the science book – everything you need to know about the world and how it works“.