Electric Universe is this year’s winner of the Aventis Prize for Science Books. David Bodanis has written a great little book that skillfully and simply tells us the story of electricity.
Although much, but by no means all, of what he relates in his book had been taught to me in A Level physics lessons years ago, I didn’t recall it nearly as well as I’d have hoped, and I don’t think my understanding of it was ever as good. Bodanis gets stuck into the interesting sides of the story and launches into a few areas that could easily be entire book subjects in themselves, including laying the underwater telegraph lines (actually, this is a good book on that subject), radar, early computers and the discovery of how our nerves work.
Actually, one of the delights of this book is that you read it on several levels with a basic rattling 240 page story, notes for those who want further detail, and an impressively substantial “futher reading” list which is much more than just a bibliography.
If you don’t actually know how precisely a telephone works, or a radio wave is sent, then you need to read this book.