One of America's best-known essayists on science, physicist Jeremy Bernstein, here presents his latest collection of work. Drawn from over ten years of writing for magazines such as The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and Scientific American, these essays provide illuminating accounts of the lives of some of this century's most important scientists and the value of their work.

Bernstein's fans who remember these pieces from their original publication will be pleased to see that many that had to be cut - sometimes drastically - to fit magazine space requirements are here restored to their original length. Bernstein has added introductions and postscripts to many essays as well. In all, this collection contains a great deal of new and unpublished material.

An added bonus is Bernstein's four pieces of published fiction - three of which are hilarious send-ups of academic and sexual politics at a small and (we hope) imaginary college.