The Universe as It Really Is: Earth, Space, Matter, and Time

This excellent, accessible guide from Scott, a San Diego State professor emeritus of psychology who died in 2017, allows readers to acquaint themselves with the basic facts, history, and key figures of multiple physical sciences in a single volume. Reflecting its origins in a radio show, San Diego Science, which Scott hosted weekly for several years, the style throughout is more conversational than academic, and includes plenty of arresting facts designed to grab a lay audience’s attention, such as that a single quasar “generates the light of four million million suns, 100 times the total luminance of the Milky Way.” In his chapter “Earth: A Biography,” Scott discusses Claire Patterson, “one of the most influential people of whom you have never heard,” who first gave a date of 4.5 billion years for the Earth’s age and led early campaigns to remove lead from consumer products. During his discussion of “Atmosphere and Weather,” he describes “Project Stormfury,” a 21-year effort by the U.S. military to influence weather, and reminds readers that human-caused climate change has “the level of certainty of plate tectonics and biological evolution.” Other topics include gravity, time, light, oceans, and a tour of space extending from the Sun out to the expanses of “The Cosmos.” Scott presents a wide range of scientific fact and history in a way that will delight and inform readers[em]. (July) [/em]