Unless we are brilliant at science in our teenage years, many of us put off 'childish things' - science museums, palaeontology - in favour of museums, art galleries and concert halls. A cultured person, Natalie Angier argues, should know about the classic ideas of physics and biology as well as the classic works of Beethoven and Picasso. Drawing on conversations with many of the world's leading scientists, Angier takes us on a vivid, good-humoured and informative tour of this neglected canon. An entertaining guide to scientific literacy - from stem-cell research to bird flu and global warming - that explains the machinery of this place we call home.

Every sentence sparkles with wit and charm. . . it all adds up to an intoxicating cocktail of fine science writing. --Richard Dawkins
Natalie Angier makes planets and particles sexy. . .She turns guys with lab coats and pocket protectors into Daniel Craig. --Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind
An essential experience . . . How dare she write so artfully, explain so brilliantly, rendering us scientists simultaneously proud and inarticulate! --Leon Lederman, Nobel laureate
Every single sentence . . . sparkles with enough intelligence and wit to delight science-phobes and science-philes alike. I loved it! --Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Bait and Switch and Nickel and Dimed
Natalie Angier provides a masterful, authoritative synthesis of the state of knowledge across the entire scientific landscape. --Howard Gardner, Harvard University, author of Five Minds for the Future and Frames of Mind
Exuberant . . . She writes with such verve, humor, and warmth.
Angier is a nimble stylist with a playful sense of alliteration and consonance. --Ben Dickinson

Natalie Angier writes about biology for the New York Times, for which she has won a Pulitzer Prize, an American Association for the Advancement of Science journalism award and other honours. She is the author of The Beauty of the Beastly, Natural Obsessions and Woman: An Intimate Geography, which was a New York Times bestseller and a National Book Award finalist and was named a Best Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, People, National Public Radio, the Village Voice and Publishers Weekly, among others. Angier lives with her husband and daughter in Washington, D.C.