Book Review: Seven Brief Lessons On Physics - Carlo Rovelli

★★★★☆: A cute and poetic mini science guide for star lovers.

First of all, look at this snazzy, spacey cover! This is a very beautiful book. Secondly, Carlo Rovelli is very romantic about science. He's all stardust and magic and beauty, and I love that. He keeps occasionally making these sweeping asides - poetic monologues about the loveliness of science. It's very touching. As for the actual scientific content, I think it serves as a nice general overview of physics (if rather esoteric). The bits and pieces of history are woven through a narrative about the human relationship with science quite nicely, and there are little bits of appropriate humour and charming illustrations. The book feels very warm, like it wants to scoop you up in its arms and tell you science stories around a campfire.

It's not extensive by any means, and I wonder if it might work better if it was a bit more focused and a bit more bulked out with actual theory and knowledge, but it does its job nicely in explaining the history of the science and in making the reader ask big, philosophical questions. It's a very sweet book and probably a really nice little gift for someone. I definitely feel keen to read more extensive physics books after this.