A new dimension to science studies

Rebecca at Ipsa Dixit reports that her family has the brand-spanking new title, Einstein Adds a New Dimension (Smithsonian Books, 480 pages), the third volume in Joy Hakim's wonderful Story of Science series.

From a recent Edutopia article (Edutopia's "Daring Dozen" profile of Ms. Hakim last year is here):

Journalist and textbook author Joy Hakim is still writing, adding to her textbook catalog with continued brilliance. Her latest opus is a contemporary science book for secondary school students called Einstein Adds a New Dimension, due in print this September. It's the third in a series she has written that approaches science through its history and stories, rather than focusing exclusively on its theorems and formulas.

"This is the greatest scientific era ever," she says, "and yet we don't teach kids much about it. No wonder school science often seems irrelevant." Though Hakim admits this is the toughest book she has ever written, it's also the most exciting. Thanks to help from Edwin F. Taylor, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she's keeping things on target when it comes to quantum theory, relativity, cosmology, and many other realms of cutting-edge science. Most of all, though, she's achieving her real purpose: "To get readers to grapple with ideas, do critical thinking, and get an intellectual life."

A few years ago, Time Magazine noted that Ms. Hakim "has been called the J.K. Rowling of textbooks."

The book is jointly published by Smithsonian Books and the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA). Thanks to NSTA, you can download and read a sample chapter from the book, A Boy with Something on His Mind.