From reviews of the first edition: 'Weinberg ... is no stranger to explaining abstruse science in a clear and engaging fashion to the general public, which is precisely what he does here. The building blocks of matter - from electrons all the way down to muons, pions, hadrons, and the charmed quark - become, in his hands, so much intellectual putty.' The Boston Globe 'One cannot fail to be touched by it.' New Scientist 'It is a happy fact that some of the greatest scientists have been skilled expositors of their subject for nonscientific audiences. Einstein, Eddington, and Feynman come to mind. Steven Weinberg, a Nobel Laureate and brilliantly contemporary theorist, belongs in this company ... It is ideally suited to inspire a next generation of physicists.' American Journal of Physics 'A beautiful example of a new approach with which the nonscientist can attain literacy in physics.' Physics Today 'Weinberg takes the reader through a brief history of electric forces from Coulomb to Faraday, enabling him to...