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The Infographic Guide to Science
Discover how the world really works in this spectacular journey through space and time that shows the development of the material Universe from the first cataclysmic moments to the emergence of human and machine intelligence. The Infographic Guide to Science presents the unfolding science that lies behind then and now.
Starting from the point of physical origin, the book moves through quarks, atoms, molecules and stars; to planet building, organic chemistry, the emergence of life, and finally on to sentience, the human mind, and its quest to understand the Universe.
Spectacular visuals give insight into how the world really works, covering all the major branches of scientific understanding. Using vast amounts of information to cross-reference a breadth of different subject areas, the book features physics, cosmology, chemistry, earth science, biology, non-science, medicine, engineering, and computer technology.
Four core sections follow the progression of scientific theory and discoveries over time. These chapters, with examples, are:
The Universe -- The Geometry of the Universe, Universal Matter, Thermodynamics, Chemical Bonds, Supernovas, Nuclear Fisson Earth -- Planet Formation, Rocketry and exploration, The Lithosphere, Extreme weather, Aqueous chemistry, Nucleic acid Life -- The Great Oxygenation Event, Chromosomes, Multicellular Precambrian Life, Gills vs. Lungs, Evolution of grasses Humans -- Leakey-Laetoli Footprints, Language Instinct, Muscular-skeletal System, Brain development, Emotion, Futurology. Even with the most skilled teacher, the sciences can be overwhelming to absorb and understand. The Infographic Guide to Science utilizes the power of visual design and succinct, authoritative text to illustrate and instruct such that readers can follow in the order and at the pace they prefer.
Starting from the point of physical origin, the book moves through quarks, atoms, molecules and stars; to planet building, organic chemistry, the emergence of life, and finally on to sentience, the human mind, and its quest to understand the Universe.
Spectacular visuals give insight into how the world really works, covering all the major branches of scientific understanding. Using vast amounts of information to cross-reference a breadth of different subject areas, the book features physics, cosmology, chemistry, earth science, biology, non-science, medicine, engineering, and computer technology.
Four core sections follow the progression of scientific theory and discoveries over time. These chapters, with examples, are:
The Universe -- The Geometry of the Universe, Universal Matter, Thermodynamics, Chemical Bonds, Supernovas, Nuclear Fisson Earth -- Planet Formation, Rocketry and exploration, The Lithosphere, Extreme weather, Aqueous chemistry, Nucleic acid Life -- The Great Oxygenation Event, Chromosomes, Multicellular Precambrian Life, Gills vs. Lungs, Evolution of grasses Humans -- Leakey-Laetoli Footprints, Language Instinct, Muscular-skeletal System, Brain development, Emotion, Futurology. Even with the most skilled teacher, the sciences can be overwhelming to absorb and understand. The Infographic Guide to Science utilizes the power of visual design and succinct, authoritative text to illustrate and instruct such that readers can follow in the order and at the pace they prefer.
256 pages, Paperback
First published September 20, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 17, 2018
It is not an exaggeration to say that I've never read a book with so many typos, formatting inconsistencies, and grammatical mistakes. It was breathtaking.
I don't mean "This one tiny caption had a misplaced comma." There are typos in big headers, there are dropped words, repeated words, unfinished sentences, a tenuous grasp of the purpose of commas, semicolons, and hyphens, absurdly long run-on sentences, and writing so bad as to make the information inaccessible. "Pathways" is "parthways," there's a reference to "the extraordinarily vision" of certain animals, every single instance of "perceive" is misspelled, "conscious" is "concious" - I could go on. There is one chart/infographic that doesn't make sense unless the labels are switched. Perhaps most confusingly, the author designates BCE and CE as Before Christian Era and Christian Era.
I did actually enjoy much of the book, which was frustrating, and assuming the author's science is miles better than his writing, grammar, syntax, and formatting, I may have learned a lot. I could have been generous, and rounded up my rating because of the quality and variety of the infographics (which is tremendous and thrilling), or the sheer amount of scientific content. However, given how unbelievably sloppy every other part of the book is, in good conscience I can't give a high rating.
I don't mean "This one tiny caption had a misplaced comma." There are typos in big headers, there are dropped words, repeated words, unfinished sentences, a tenuous grasp of the purpose of commas, semicolons, and hyphens, absurdly long run-on sentences, and writing so bad as to make the information inaccessible. "Pathways" is "parthways," there's a reference to "the extraordinarily vision" of certain animals, every single instance of "perceive" is misspelled, "conscious" is "concious" - I could go on. There is one chart/infographic that doesn't make sense unless the labels are switched. Perhaps most confusingly, the author designates BCE and CE as Before Christian Era and Christian Era.
I did actually enjoy much of the book, which was frustrating, and assuming the author's science is miles better than his writing, grammar, syntax, and formatting, I may have learned a lot. I could have been generous, and rounded up my rating because of the quality and variety of the infographics (which is tremendous and thrilling), or the sheer amount of scientific content. However, given how unbelievably sloppy every other part of the book is, in good conscience I can't give a high rating.
November 3, 2016
(Review of the UK edition, called 'Eureka'.)
I'm not the most visual person - words mostly work better for me - so I've never entirely understood the appeal of infographics at a gut level, though intellectually I can see that for many people they're a good way to get facts across. It doesn't help that they have a seedy image online, as they are often provided to blogs and websites as free clickbait. However, I couldn't resist the idea of a book that aims to make science more accessible via infographics.
Tom Cabot does not hold back on his topics, covering cosmology with a lot of physics thrown in, the Earth (which slightly oddly includes DNA), life and humans. By far the longest of these is life, with over 40 entries, each a two-page spread of infographics. Each section opens with a text spread and closes with an abstract graphic. When it comes to the infographics themselves, this was one of the rare examples of my thinking 'this book isn't big enough'. I'm not a great fan of the coffee table book, but that format might have been better here, as Cabot crams so much into each spread that the text has to be small and the pages crowded. In some cases - the antimatter sub-diagram, for example - the text was so small I literally couldn't read it.
When dealing with a relatively straightforward topic, this approach works beautifully. Take, for instance, the electromagnetic radiation page. We have a full width e/m spectrum across the page with all sorts of goodies pinging off it to tell us about everything from 'Whistlers' (very low frequency radio waves, apparently) through to gamma rays, plus a sideline in explaining blackbody radiation. With more complex topics it felt as if you had to know a little bit already to cope with the complexity of the graphic layout. Take, for instance, the spread on relativity. Sensibly this only really covered general relativity (though it didn't point out that the special version was missing). There's a lot going on here and its quite difficult to pick your way through it. There's a classic 'bowling ball/rubber sheet' illustration, a really interesting gravity wave spectrum diagram, Ligo outputs and many text boxes, but no clear structure for the reader to grasp. I think part of the problem is that the classic infographic has a clear reading direction - they're tall and thin and you read down them from top to bottom. The spreads here are a splatter of information and it's hard to know how to take them in.
For me, the life/human sections were where the book really succeeded. This is because the fundamentals of the science here are a lot simpler. This might not seem the case when you look at the beautiful graphics of enzyme molecules or the human metabolic pathways, but the thing is that the concepts - the building blocks for the infographic - are mostly simple, it's just the resultant constructs that aren't. In physics and cosmology, getting the far more complex concepts into an infographic form mean they either have to be highly simplified, or presented at too high a level for a beginner - or, in practise, both of these at the same time - which makes the spread a little less satisfying.
Some of the most effective spreads are amongst the simplest - because the impact really comes through best without getting overwhelmed. I loved, for example, the 'gills versus lungs' spread which compared the two ways of getting oxygen, comparing things like viscosity, density and oxygen content of air and water in graphic form. Similarly, the 'human anatomy' spread which takes a Vitruvian Man style skeleton and tells us when the various components (e.g. strong wrist, chin, large brain) evolved. I'm sure my paleontological friends would dispute some of the evolutionary history (they always do), but it provided one of many 'Hmm, that's interesting' moments. Having said this, there could, perhaps, have been a little more variety in the way data was presented graphically - the same styles were used repeatedly without some of the familiar infographic tricks of, for example, representing populations as arrays of representative images.
There is a Kindle version of the book, incidentally, but it's not going to work on a classic black and white e-ink Kindle - go for paper unless you have a good, high resolution colour screen.
Eureka is no substitute for a 'proper' popular science book because good writing always has a core of narrative, of story telling, where an infographic is a relentless collection of facts - more akin the Guinness Book of Records than a great non-fiction title. But there is a big market for fact books, and this is surely one of the best ways to present them. Using infographics this way is innovative and fun, and is likely to bring in readers who wouldn't touch conventional science writing, which surely has to be a good thing. I think maybe it could have been pitched for a slightly wider audience, but it's still a remarkable book and scores highly for taking an original approach.
I'm not the most visual person - words mostly work better for me - so I've never entirely understood the appeal of infographics at a gut level, though intellectually I can see that for many people they're a good way to get facts across. It doesn't help that they have a seedy image online, as they are often provided to blogs and websites as free clickbait. However, I couldn't resist the idea of a book that aims to make science more accessible via infographics.
Tom Cabot does not hold back on his topics, covering cosmology with a lot of physics thrown in, the Earth (which slightly oddly includes DNA), life and humans. By far the longest of these is life, with over 40 entries, each a two-page spread of infographics. Each section opens with a text spread and closes with an abstract graphic. When it comes to the infographics themselves, this was one of the rare examples of my thinking 'this book isn't big enough'. I'm not a great fan of the coffee table book, but that format might have been better here, as Cabot crams so much into each spread that the text has to be small and the pages crowded. In some cases - the antimatter sub-diagram, for example - the text was so small I literally couldn't read it.
When dealing with a relatively straightforward topic, this approach works beautifully. Take, for instance, the electromagnetic radiation page. We have a full width e/m spectrum across the page with all sorts of goodies pinging off it to tell us about everything from 'Whistlers' (very low frequency radio waves, apparently) through to gamma rays, plus a sideline in explaining blackbody radiation. With more complex topics it felt as if you had to know a little bit already to cope with the complexity of the graphic layout. Take, for instance, the spread on relativity. Sensibly this only really covered general relativity (though it didn't point out that the special version was missing). There's a lot going on here and its quite difficult to pick your way through it. There's a classic 'bowling ball/rubber sheet' illustration, a really interesting gravity wave spectrum diagram, Ligo outputs and many text boxes, but no clear structure for the reader to grasp. I think part of the problem is that the classic infographic has a clear reading direction - they're tall and thin and you read down them from top to bottom. The spreads here are a splatter of information and it's hard to know how to take them in.
For me, the life/human sections were where the book really succeeded. This is because the fundamentals of the science here are a lot simpler. This might not seem the case when you look at the beautiful graphics of enzyme molecules or the human metabolic pathways, but the thing is that the concepts - the building blocks for the infographic - are mostly simple, it's just the resultant constructs that aren't. In physics and cosmology, getting the far more complex concepts into an infographic form mean they either have to be highly simplified, or presented at too high a level for a beginner - or, in practise, both of these at the same time - which makes the spread a little less satisfying.
Some of the most effective spreads are amongst the simplest - because the impact really comes through best without getting overwhelmed. I loved, for example, the 'gills versus lungs' spread which compared the two ways of getting oxygen, comparing things like viscosity, density and oxygen content of air and water in graphic form. Similarly, the 'human anatomy' spread which takes a Vitruvian Man style skeleton and tells us when the various components (e.g. strong wrist, chin, large brain) evolved. I'm sure my paleontological friends would dispute some of the evolutionary history (they always do), but it provided one of many 'Hmm, that's interesting' moments. Having said this, there could, perhaps, have been a little more variety in the way data was presented graphically - the same styles were used repeatedly without some of the familiar infographic tricks of, for example, representing populations as arrays of representative images.
There is a Kindle version of the book, incidentally, but it's not going to work on a classic black and white e-ink Kindle - go for paper unless you have a good, high resolution colour screen.
Eureka is no substitute for a 'proper' popular science book because good writing always has a core of narrative, of story telling, where an infographic is a relentless collection of facts - more akin the Guinness Book of Records than a great non-fiction title. But there is a big market for fact books, and this is surely one of the best ways to present them. Using infographics this way is innovative and fun, and is likely to bring in readers who wouldn't touch conventional science writing, which surely has to be a good thing. I think maybe it could have been pitched for a slightly wider audience, but it's still a remarkable book and scores highly for taking an original approach.
July 23, 2017
I received this as a First Reads program through GoodReads. Granted, I'm giving this review (very) belatedly, as I started this book a far while back, but I have finally gotten around to finishing it.
Part of the reason it took so long to finish this (besides being married, working a job/two jobs at times, coaching, three daughters, etc), is that there is just so much information involved in it. Which is why this book is such a tremendous book to begin with. Its 237 pages of infographics, each page filled with lots of information, __A LOT__ to take in.
The book starts with the big bang, and ends with AI (though only one infographic devoted to AI). Each two-page spread covers a different topic, and each topic segues into the next (albeit sometimes it's a bit of a remote thread that carries over).
This is definitely a wonderful guide, and so full of information, that it fits great onto any desk, for a fun reference, and a great science beginner book to any teenager (or even younger) getting into science.
As this was a pre-release edition, I did notice a few typographic errors and misspellings (or extra 0's or missing commas in numerical orders), but overall presented very well.
Part of the reason it took so long to finish this (besides being married, working a job/two jobs at times, coaching, three daughters, etc), is that there is just so much information involved in it. Which is why this book is such a tremendous book to begin with. Its 237 pages of infographics, each page filled with lots of information, __A LOT__ to take in.
The book starts with the big bang, and ends with AI (though only one infographic devoted to AI). Each two-page spread covers a different topic, and each topic segues into the next (albeit sometimes it's a bit of a remote thread that carries over).
This is definitely a wonderful guide, and so full of information, that it fits great onto any desk, for a fun reference, and a great science beginner book to any teenager (or even younger) getting into science.
As this was a pre-release edition, I did notice a few typographic errors and misspellings (or extra 0's or missing commas in numerical orders), but overall presented very well.
September 21, 2017
Strongly recommend to those who claim they're not science geeks, or "don't get" some topic of science. These are the "picture is worth a thousand words" illustrations. Read the small print for the details or just take in the graphic representation of the concept. Each two page spread covers a particular sliver of science as grouped within a few main headings - the universe, the earth, life, etc.
January 7, 2020
Some of the graphics were interesting, but many were both at too high of a level to be interesting and too basic to provide new information.
January 28, 2020
nice idea and a good execution
October 22, 2016
INCREDIBLE book. I am blown away at what I've just read. I would consider this book an excellent primer for anyone who's interested in science. This book offers a visually stunning and intellectually concise, yet comprehensive, explanation of the universe and our place in it. The book explains life from the very beginning of our universe, through the creation of matter, the evolution of complex life from its origins as primordial compounds, on through the anatomical and physiological development of mankind, finally ending with computing and artificial intelligence and where we'll go from here. The pictures and infographics are amazing and engage the reader unlike any pure text book ever could. A truly astounding book. For anyone who loves science or wants to get a generalized conception of scientific understanding, literally encompassing physics, astronomy, chemistry, geology, earth science, and biology, this is a book you should read.
November 14, 2016
Beautiful, would be an amazing gift for a science-lover in your life. Also would have been helpful to have 10-15 years ago as some of these pages made more sense than my university textbooks.
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February 4, 2017A visually stunning book.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews