Review
"Highly recommended. Ball is an inspired generalist who is able to take different intellectual and academic perspectives, as well as wildly divergent natural phenomena, and weave them into a coherent tapestry that will serve the professional and the casual reader alike. The writing is both precise and readable, and the generous illustrations are fascinating, informative, and consistently well done. Although a number of works like this have been published in recent years, few have been of similar quality. These three volumes are a worthwhile addition to any library collection."--
Choice"Provide[s] a window into all that's fascinating in nature, skimming from pattern to pattern in prose and history, shedding light on the physical and chemical forces behind nature's tapestry without losing readers in the math." --
Seed Magazine
About the Author
Philip Ball is a freelance writer and a consultant editor for
Nature, where he previously worked as an editor for physical sciences. He is a regular commentator in the scientific and popular media on science and its interactions with art, history and culture. His ten books on scientific subjects include
The Self-Made Tapestry: Pattern Formation in Nature,
H2O: A Biography of Water,
The Devil's Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science, and
Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads To Another, which won the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books. He was awarded the 2006 James T. Grady - James H. Stack award by the American Chemical Society for interpreting chemistry for the public. Philip studied chemistry at Oxford and holds a doctorate in physics from the University of Bristol. His latest book
The Music Instinct published in February 2010.
