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This book is packed with information. It has colorful photographs and charts throughout that make it much more interesting to read than if was just narrative with no words. Because it’s so dense, it’s not the kind of book you would sit down and read cover to cover. It’s more of a reference book. When you are thinking something like, “I want to know more about zeppelins and when they were first invented,” you can look it up using the very comprehensive index in the back. Or pick a certain time period and read about it. This book starts at 2.5MYA and goes through 2013 so that covers pretty much everything that’s every happened in the history of science!

There is also a reference section with tables including units of measurement, laws of physics and much more that is very handy to refer to if you just need a quick piece of information. Also included is a large glossary and a who’s who of scientists.
Although this is a book meant for adults, my children enjoyed leafing through it as well. It’s an excellent resource for the many questions kids ask about the world.

All in all, I found this book very helpful and informative. If you are interested in science, this is the book for you. ( )

If you’re familiar with DorlingKindersley (DK) editions, let me assure you this book is a trademark DK. You know exactly what to expect and I just need to tell you that they’ve teamed here with the Smithsonian Institution to cover discoveries in every discipline of science (and math) from 2.5 million years ago to the present. It’s fascinating to see the passage of time slow with each turn of the page from millions of years to thousands, then hundreds and eventually to a year-by-year treatment of the most recent discoveries.

That chronological presentation is both good and bad -- very good in that it integrates, according to date, everything that’s going on around the world and in every scientific discipline; but a bit bad because it dumps everything in a mess together on a page where you can be reading about plague and then, without transition, the next sentence is about projectile physics. Scientific disciplines are dealt with throughout the book, bit by bit over time as discoveries are made. There’s a decent Index to locate all references to a topic, and sometimes the editors do stop to pull out important topics for a past-to-present overview -- for example the wheel, calculating machines, communication devices, and dozens of others.

If you’re not familiar with DK, you’re in for a treat. They produce visually lush books, renowned for being loaded with colorful images printed in sharp focus on smooth, silky pages. This is a heavy, coffee-table book, and it’s packed with information to accompany the images. One caveat: the information in many DK books, including this one, tends to be of breadth, not depth (i.e. facts/trivia, not understanding).

For some readers, the topics might even be an inspiration to travel -- to well-known historical sites and museums and, for me, to unknowns like Yellowstone National Park’s Grand Prismatic Spring. But for any reader interested in science history, it’s a good book to dip in and out of -- an “idea” book to inspire further reading elsewhere.

(Review based on a copy of the book provided by the publisher.) ( )