by Wayne Biddle
The author believes too many of us do not understand what scientists today are talking about. In the Three Mile Island and Love Canal controversies, he says, the public, reporters and politicians understood so little they either under-reacted or overreacted—or both. Biddle, a Harper's editor, tries to rectify the problem with 140 brief essays that explain such terms as black holes ("They would be ideal for getting rid of nuclear wastes, New York City's garbage and surely a few movie people"), entropy ("the tendency of anything to change toward a condition of greater disorder, e.g., solid to liquid"), quarks and sunspots. The explanations are necessarily simplified, not so necessarily coy. But unlike most dictionaries, this one can pleasurably be read straight through, from absolute zero to zero-sum game. (Viking, $8.95)
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