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Rating: 
Summary: Lively and comprehensive--a tour de force.
Review: I cannot understand the negative review by the reader from Oakton. I did not find a "condescending tone" or "patronizing attitiude" anywhere in this book. On the contrary, I have great appreciation for the authors' ability to cover essentially all the fundamentals of modern science in a pleasant and stimulating way. What they have done is to produce a kind of "science for poets" course that would be suitable at the high school or college level. They focus each of the 18 chapters on a single great idea of science, e.g., ch.1 ("The Universe is knowable and preditable."), ch.9 ("Everything is made of quarks and leptons."), ch.16 ("All life is based on the same genetic code.").
Of course this is not as detailed as a textbook, but by the same token, it does not wear you out or stuff you to the gills with more than you can digest. Another very pleasant aspect is the absence of the usual arm-twisting you'd get in a course: none of those bloody, in-your-face "learning objectives," no tests, no homework, no lists to memorize. Since the authors are both college teachers, they showed great restraint and wisdom in shunning that assiduous approach, which most teachers (myself included) tend to deploy in their daily work. They give you enough to develop a broad outline, but not so much as to kill your interest. Three cheers for their demonstration of top-quality science teaching.P.S. I found a smattering of errors in those few chapters where I was knowledgeable, but these are all minor and will hardly be noticed by most readers, let alone detract from the overall learning experience.
Rating: 
Summary: A great cure for insomnia
Review: There are some books about science that ignite the imagination, sparking a lifelong fascination about the book's subject... and then there is Science Matters, which did a good job of convincing me that I will never be a scientist. From the very first pages of the book to the last, the authors' condescending tone rings through every word. Eventually (after about, say, page 5) the patronizing attitude that almost oozes from each chapter becomes unbearable. Unfortunately, matters are not improved by the dullness of the text, which, in spite of its relative lucidity, still has a potent soporific effect.
Rating:
Summary: excellent
Review: This book gives you as much information as a classroom textbook, but it is a lot more interesting. I felt this was an excellent book because there are not many books that provide as much information as this one and that are actually a good read. I had a hard time putting this book down once I started to read it.
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