Customer Reviews

Asimov's New Guide to Science

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I was a young reader and my personality was still not set. So many "bad" books kept pulling me in the wrong directions. I read all bestsellers though they taught me nothing. A day came when I had nothing to read and I happened to come across this book in my elder brother's library. It was written long before I was born. Yet, as I was truly bored, I began to read it and I was hooked before long. The world of Science was visible to me and, for the first time in my life, it looked attractive. I can truly say that this book changed my life. I now am completing my pre-med degree and will be off to medical school before long. I have never been happier; Science has become my life. Thank you Isaac Asimov.

Update for anyone interested 12/20/2011:
Ha! I cannot believe that was me! I had such an odd, self-important way of writing back then. I graduated magna cum laude with a B.S. in biology with minors in chemistry and English. Managed to get sidetracked, became somewhat of a hippie, and did not go to medical school. Don't freak out yet! Science is still my religion, but now it is specifically environmental science. I was accepted into a lovely graduate program and am on the verge of finishing my thesis. Have sent out a few applications for phd programs in ecology. Overall: toss aside your Da Vinci Codes and whatnots, kids, because science will rock your world!

I have a personal small "library" of scientific books. This book has to be, by far, the most well structured, well explained, systematic and exhilarating read. I would rate this book as number 1 among possibly 50 similar books that I have read. If you are technically enthusiastic, would like to know about anything and everything pertaining to science and have a jolly good read at that, I would highly recommend this book. Asimov is gifted as a writer, in that he takes the most complex concepts and explains it in such a way, that a first-time reader on the subject feels confident of his/her understanding. If you have lots of time (900 pages of size 10 text!), are a thinker and want to begin to understand the great works of genii ranging from archimedes, galileo, newton and einstein, this book is for you! Well done to a man long gone. He leaves a legacy of genius !

In my opinion, Asimov provided the most entertaining and readable scientific "texts" around, and this comprehensive volume is his best. Despite the fact that I am a layperson, and this book is nearly 1000 pages, I devoured it and longed for more. If you are not a lover of the sciences when you begin Asimov's Guide to Science, you will be when you finish! Anyone 12 years and older should read this book. It will change the way you look at the universe.

As a science teacher, I give this book my highest possible recommendation! It tells the stories behind the science: the men and women who made the important discoveries and how they did it. My only complaint is that the text is now 20 years old. I wish someone could recommend a more recent text--written with as wide a scope--that was more up-to-date.

In addition to being a legendary science-fiction writer, Isaac Asimov is one of the most successful science popularizers of all time, and this book demonstrates why. In it, he delivers a comprehensive, well-organized, well-written survey of the known sciences as of the time of publication. But, since that time was over twenty years ago, is his book still worth reading today? Of course, it is! This is because Asimov takes a historical approach, first explaining the initial questions that puzzled observers of the natural world, then following the research of talented and brilliant scientists over the centuries that brought us to our present-day understanding. This lends much of the text the fascination of a mystery story, and gives the attentive reader a good basic grounding in the sciences.

The item arrived on time in condition just as described, it is a good experience. My teenager son is enjoying the book.

This is a great book, as it reviews near all aspects of science, from our begginings to the tiny atom.

This book has just the kind of explanation that i wanted-- a lot of good detail, without getting too technical. The only problem is that as a small paperback covering a lot of ground, the print is very small and difficult to see (i am over 40).

Isaac Asimov is surely a brilliant scientist and an expert his subject, biochemistry. But that doesn't translate to easy and clear reading nor a smooth flow of ideas. Asimov goes off into so many side tangents, often for 10 to 20 pages or more, that it is extremely difficult to follow his primary ideas that led to the tangents. I found this book very abstruse and poorly written. I wouldn't recommend it to the casual reader, and I was in a college course that required it. The tedious details that Asimov goes into are entirely unnecessary, in my opinion, and that contributes to the almost 900 pages of pedantic and excruciatingly boring science history. He's a terrific science fiction writer but forget about this way-too-long tome. It will put you to sleep.