Science: 50 Essential Ideas

by Anne Rooney

How did life emerge? What are the smallest elements of matter? How are planets formed?

Over the centuries, brilliant men and women have sought to develop theories to answer the most compelling questions about the world around us. Through their amazing insights and conscientious efforts they helped to create the world we know today. In this beautifully illustrated full-color hardback, award-winning author Anne Rooney introduces you to the fascinating world of science and its greatest practitioners.


• Dark matter and dark energy
• DNA and the Human Genome Project
• Schrodinger's Cat (the uncertainty principle)
• The search for extra-terrestrial life
• Nuclear fusion and fission

Features the ideas of such pivotal scientists as Isaac Newton, Marie Curie, Charles Darwin, and Stephen Hawking, this essential guide will bring you up to speed on all of the world's most important scientific discoveries.

ABOUT THE The 50 Essential Ideas series brings together entertaining, highly visual guides to different disciplines, from philosophy to physics. It explores the subject's 50 greatest ideas, giving readers an accessible overview of its defining theories and breakthroughs.

208 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2023

About the author

Anne Rooney gained a degree and then a PhD in medieval literature from Trinity College, Cambridge. After a period of teaching medieval English and French literature at the universities of Cambridge and York, she left to pursue a career as a freelance writer. She has written many books for adults and children on a variety of subjects, including literature and history. She lives in Cambridge and is Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Essex.

Reviews

[J Earl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Science: 50 Essential Ideas, by Anne Rooney, is a simple and straightforward book that serves as an excellent introduction to some basic scientific concepts.

This book is not, and doesn't set out to be, an in-depth look at these ideas. This volume can serve many purposes. The first that come to mind for me are an introductory text for young readers (ideally with parents/guardians reading with them) and as an overview for those who just want a better understanding of science in general.

For any reader this can act as a jumping off point for whatever concepts intrigue them. While not having a bibliography each entry has key words and names that can be used to search online or in a textbook. From there, the possibilities are endless.

I would certainly recommend this for anyone wanting to have a basic intro to important science ideas, whether for themselves or their children. I also think those of us with education in the sciences can benefit from having a book that makes us step back and see these concepts from a general perspective, we can often get bogged down in whatever specific areas we like and lose the bigger picture that first sparked our interest. We can then, one hopes, share that excitement with others.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. I found the tone to be conversational and the book was easy to read, yet hard to put down. Although the “ideas” chapters are short, they provide surprisingly broad stories. The illustrations are excellent and help clarify many things. If the book had one fault, it would be how certain very broad ideas were broken up into different, non-consecutive chapters. But that didn’t really affect how I felt about the book. Thank you to Netgalley and Arcturus Publishing for the digital review copy.

[Becca Gonzalez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just wanted a basic overview of the most basic and updated science theories because with so much propaganda and misinformation out there I just wanted something real that wasn't debatable. But, in a way, some of these theories are definitely debatable in ways because they still can't explain everything! Certain basic principles definitely have been established for quite some time though.