The Instant Physicist: An Illustrated Guide
Muller distills information from his Physics for Future Presidents (2008) and his university physics course into a lively little book. It’s simply laid out: on left-hand pages, there are brief examinations of interesting or little-known facts; on right-hand pages, there are Joey Manfre’s humorous illustrations based on those facts. For example, a discussion of the importance of the greenhouse effect—it keeps the planet from freezing over—is accompanied by a cartoon of a man in a parka saying Happy? to a frozen-solid protester, whose sign reads, End the greenhouse effect. Readers will learn a lot from the book: you can outrun a tsunami; plutonium is 1,000 times less toxic than Botox; antimatter isn’t science fiction; organically grown foods have more carcinogens than foods sprayed with artificial pesticides. Oh, and Muller reveals the truth behind the world-famous 1947 crash of those mysterious flying disks in Roswell, New Mexico (it’s not what you might think). Very entertaining and very informative—a winning combination. --David Pitt