cover image Lost in Wonder: Imagining Science and Other Mysteries

Lost in Wonder: Imagining Science and Other Mysteries

Colette Brooks, . . Counterpoint, $15.95 (233pp) ISBN 978-1-58243-572-5

What is science, and what makes scientists so different from the rest of us? Brooks (In the City: Random Acts of Awareness ) poses, but never really answers these questions in her argument for everyone learning the language of science. We must get over our fear of math, Brooks claims. Elaborating on the gap between scientists and laypeople, the author describes how the Wright Brothers' sister Katherine was “mystified” by their obsession with flight, and the superstitious Anna Roentgen was nervous as her husband, Wilhelm, used her hand to make the first X-ray image. Often, Brooks trivializes great work by juxtaposing it with the mundane: the creators of foam rubber slippers and Stove Top stuffing share a short chapter with Ada Lovelace (Lord Byron's daughter), who invented “computer” programming for Charles Babbage's “Analytical Engine.” Many chapters offer little more than name-dropping, whizzing, for example, from Isaac Newton through Galileo to Werner von Braun and remarking that “scientists are lonely men.” Although Brooks writes of wanting to “bridge the gap between experts and everybody else,” this book merely skims the surfaces of ideas and the people behind them. (June)