Gravity's Arc: The Story of Gravity from Aristotle to Einstein and Beyond

Darling, the author of The Universal Book of Astronomy and a host of other books and articles on space flight, mathematics and physics, provides a strikingly readable explanation for the complex phenomena at the cutting edge of contemporary physics. Beginning with the ancient Greeks' ruminations on the nature of the physical world and concluding with a forecast for where physics is headed, Darling uses a conversational tone and narrative storytelling to coax readers through the finer points of dark energy and dark matter, string theory, inflationary universes, black holes and wormholes. Unfortunately, the book's lack of illustrations hobbles the discussion of some topics, though readers with a cursory knowledge of high school physics should be able to navigate the sections on, say, Keplerian planetary orbits or ballistic trajectories. Darling's done an admirable job of making physics palatable to a general audience, though it seems incomplete without at least a few line drawings.