Joy HakimThe Story of Science: Newton at the Center

I love, love, love this book and this series. I'm taking a couple of years off to home school my daughter and I am just floored by how fabulous this book is at every turn. I hold two degrees from MIT and I so wish I had had this class before I went.I teach a weekly class with 3 other home school kids and they love it. We are using the Johns Hopkins workbooks as well. In my class of 5th through 7th graders, we just finished the Law of Universal Gravitation and they all mastered the difficult concepts very easily. The book uses the history of science to build the concepts up over time. So Newtons work just seemed to flow naturally from Descartes and Galileo. And the historical narrative really makes all the science memorable. The stories really show us the people and their times.I was a little concerned about using a secular book for a Christian-based home school. But, I have been pleasantly surprised. Joy Hakim doesn't shy away from the religious controversy. I was surprised to learn that John Calvin spoke out against Copernicus, citing Psalms, "He has established the earth so that it shall not be moved." But I was equally surprised to learn that Copernicus, Galileo and Newton were all deeply committed to their faith. Because the book presents these things as historical facts, I think that both religious people and atheists can use this book to explore their beliefs and how they mesh with scientific inquiry.I wish we could get this entire series into the hands of every kid in this country. Well done, Joy Hakim! Can't wait for the biology text to come out.

I love the way Hakim weaves in history and personal stories and purchased all three books! In my opinion does a better job than Tiner's series. Can't comment on Bauer's series as they came out later than Hakim's and I'm not familiar with them.The reason I didn't rate these books 5 stars are because the pages are too busy with information snippets - may be hard for many readers to stay with the main reading.Also, please be aware that even though the title is "The Story of Science" is doesn't cover biological and earth sciences so it really isn't the "full" story of science.I used traditional approach for homeschooling middle school aged children and these 3 books worked really well as my science spine, supplementing with the library, YouTube and other resource.Even though I'm done with homeschooling, have retained these books in my library as they are still fun to pick up and read. My sister who recently visited with her elementary kids picked it up and read some of the stories with her kids before bed.Given the way the book is constructed - might be good for a waiting room environment or bathroom reading.

We have the 3 volumes and my 10 year old loved them. This is the second volume and what I like the most about these books is that it brings in the whole picture. Much of typical science teaching is the nuts and bolts of what was discovered and how it applies to life now. But this book gives the perspective. Who discovered this first and why did or didn't it see the light of day? What mistakes were made as people were trying to understand different concepts?What it did for my daughter was give her the human perspective. Sometimes society is not ready to support pure science, sometimes inventions are accidental. But in all, it wasn't like these scientists said "poof" and now I know something that's in your textbook. A human who lived a life in a certain time period where the culture had these beliefs was able to come up with this concept. Awesome for kids who want an example of how learning takes place in the great thinkers.

I can't sing Hakim's praises enough - from her History of US series to the The Story of Science, all three volumes so far. I've been an avid science fan my whole life, but not a hard science major, and I gasped all the way through these books as I learned things I never knew, but thought I'd known, or finally understood things I'd known about but that had puzzled me. Get over the "distracting" sidebars - they didn't bother me at all and they were full of great stuff. I ate these books up and I was only reading them to preview for my homeschooler who hates math and is bored by science, but loves history. Joy Hakim has a wonderful ability to take a huge subject (all of US history, for instance, and the development and progress of scientific thought in this case) and make it manageable, new and a fun read. My daughter is discovering that science and math really are amazing and play a critical, pivotal role in the unfolding of human history.

Good content and broken into manageable chapters for daily reading. A bit hard to incorporate the sidebars and pictures into the reading flow. Mostly we elect to save those until finishing the narrative and go back through and read the extra stuff. We are currently on the third in the series and have enjoyed them.

The is very good at writing science book when everyone can understand. It came in as promised in Very good condition.

How well each discovery is explained: What it is, how it came about, and what it lead to.

We use Joy Hakim's History of US and have added The Story of Science. Her books are the best I've found for combining facts with interesting story situations, sidebars and critical thinking. I don't understand how anyone could find anything offensive in these books unless they have a problem with presenting factual material. Children need engaging books that draw them in and engage their minds. These are the types of books that will do that. I look forward to getting her biology book when it is released.

We have purchased and read all 3 of Joy Hakim's the Story of Science series. They are very well written and are easy to read with clear explanations of the science topic as well as the history surrounding the subject. If you, or your children are interested in science and history these are more than just a reference books, these are books you can read from cover to cover. I would recommend this series of science books to anyone. We didn't read the books in order. In fact we purchased and read the Einstein book first and this was our favorite of the 3.

Brilliant.

Amazing book