Rating: 
Summary: Somewhat disappointing
Review: I gather this author makes a career of being a "debunker" of sorts. Little does he know that he's missing the point of the Potter series in many, many ways.However, if one is trying to interest a child/teen in science, and that child already loves Harry Potter, this book may be helpful. Just steer clear of the section on "The Origins of Witchcraft." It's poorly thought out, badly researched, contains misinformation, and is proof of the adage that one can't see what one isn't looking at. This author isn't looking. He should have stuck to the science stuff and left the rest of it alone. If your kid hates science and loves Harry Potter, I give it five stars because of its potential to interest a child in science. If you are looking for intelligent commentary on Harry Potter's "world," I give it no stars. I'll average that out to three stars.
Rating: 
Summary: science writing the way it should be!
Review: I got this book for Christmas and thought, oh please, some cash-in on the Harry Potter books. By Boxing Day evening I'd finished it, having read late into the night and all the next day. It rocks! As JK Rowling wouldn't know an atom from her armpit, Highfield really uses the Harry Potter books as a platform for great scientific storytelling, asking the question: could scientists make these "magic" things really happen? The answers, often supplied by real authorities in the field, are usually yes - flue powder, genetically mutating monsters, even getting brooms to fly. The scientists he interviews really get into the spirit of the books, and show us that there really are places like Hogworts, full of impossible seeming wonders and wildly eccentric characters -- They're called laboratories.
Rating: 
Summary: The science of Harry Potter?
Review: I received this book as a gift and, upon reading it, now consider it a valuable addition to my collection. There are a few things, however, that I've noticed some other reviewers pointing out that I would like to go into. The author of the book considers himself a Harry Potter fan. In fact, the majority of scientists he consults are also supposedly fans of the series. The book, however, is less about Harry Potter and more about science. Essentially, it is a book describing and explaining the realistic possibilities of scientifically creating the "magic" used by the wizards in Harry's world. If anything, the book should be retitled, "The Science of Harry Potter: How Muggles Use Technology to Acheive What Magic Already (Potentially) Does." It is, however, incredibly well researched and is obviously a labor of love and dedicated interest. I would suggest this book to any Harry Potter fan who also enjoys reading about science. It is not, on the other hand, what the average Potter fan would consider casual reading. This is a science book, discussing topics ranging from quantum physics to ethnobotony and could very well be considered boring by most people's standards.
Rating: 
Summary: You Have to Be A Fan, I Guess
Review: I suppose if you slap "Harry Potter" on the cover of anything you can guarantee some level of sales. This book wraps some serious science topics around various Harry Potter topics, and the title alone should tip you off that there is nothing serious about the book. However, a student of science knows quite well that there is no such thing as magic and a believer in magic probably has no purpose for science. Probably most troubling is that a lot of younger readers will be coaxed into reading this book and end up being overloaded with various theoretical branches of physics, some of which have little basis in reality. The tip off with my disappointment was right in the introduction where the author waxes poetic about how "science" and "magic" might be a matter of interpretation based on experience. As any student, even of young one, who paid attention in science class knows, science is demonstrable, repeatable, and usually published. The line between science and magic is quite clear -- there is no such thing as magic -- so the entire book needs to be taken with a grain of salt (Arthur Clarke quotes aside - his quote is about the perception of magic, not the reality). On the positive side, there are a number of interesting science topics raised that might lead a reader on to more serious exploration of the topics. And I suppose a die hard Potter series fan might enjoy finding some scientific justification for the imaginary world of wizards. Ultimately, this was disappointing to this science reader and Harry Potter fan, but your mileage may vary. But be warned, some of the science pointed out in the book is real leading edge theoretical stuff that is probably beyond the enjoyment of your average young Potter reader.
Rating: 
Summary: Science with lots of Harry Potter namedropping
Review: I'm only partway through this, so bear with me... The basic structure of the book so far is: XXX happens in Harry Potter's world. Here's some real-life science that is tangentially related...
Here are some examples:
"Wizards are able to teleport or 'aparate', sometimes using portkeys, like Harry when he won the Triwizard Cup. Maybe portkeys function by creating wormholes in the space-time continuum. Or maybe they make use of technology used by real-life scientists who have 'teleported' a photon from one side of a lab to the other. Such technology will probably never be able to teleport a whole person."
"Wizards at Hogwarts are sorted into houses by the Sorting Hat. It must read thoughts somehow. Real-life scientists can use functional magnetic resonance imaging to see what is happening in the brain when a person thinks. Scientists aren't at the point yet where they can read thoughts like the Sorting Hat, and they may never be able to."
"After the wizards are sorted into houses, how does that society function, given that the young wizards of Slytherin House tend to be evil, including Voldemort, the evilest of evil wizards? Real-life economists use something called 'game theory' to describe similar situations. A classic example is the Prisoner's dilemma. Imagine that Professor Dumbledore catches Harry and his archrival Malfoy's chum Crabbe. One of them has committed a serious offense that could cost their house points. He offers each one of them a deal..."
"Owls deliver mail at Hogwarts. In real life, owls have some amazing senses and abilities. Owls are not really that smart, but real-life scientists have trained parrots to do some amazing things..."
So basically there are a bunch of things in science that the author thinks are cool, and he uses Harry Potter as an excuse to talk about them. He does a decent job of describing the science. But the Harry Potter references are pretty gratuitous. This could just as easily be "The Science of Star Wars" where Wookie language and society as an excuse to talk about game theory, and Luke's land speeder as an excuse to talk about some sketchy antigravity research.
Rating:
Summary: You Have to Be A Fan, I Guess
Review: I've had my eye on this for a while and finally bought it for a relative. I've looked through it pretty extensively and concluded that this is not a book for the non-scientists (including myself) among us. Perhaps the first sign of trouble should have been the international scientific A-team that the author thanks in the introduction. This is exquisitely researched and really very interesting, but if you're expecting a cheeky offering with medium-hard scientific explanations, this might not be quite what you're looking for. For though it is fascinating, there's some complicated physics in there. If you don't have some significant college background in this, at least half of it will probably go over your head. If you're wanting fairly hard-core scientific explanations, this is a great choice. It's well-done and (I assume) pretty accurate. However, if you're looking for something a bit lighter, you might want to to look somewhere else.
Rating:
Summary: Tougher than you'd think
Review: I've had my eye on this for a while and finally bought it for a relative. I've looked through it pretty extensively and concluded that this is not a book for the non-scientists (including myself) among us. Perhaps the first sign of trouble should have been the international scientific A-team that the author thanks in the introduction. This is exquisitely researched and really very interesting, but if you're expecting a cheeky offering with medium-hard scientific explanations, this might not be quite what you're looking for. For though it is fascinating, there's some complicated physics in there. If you don't have some significant college background in this, at least half of it will probably go over your head. If you're wanting fairly hard-core scientific explanations, this is a great choice. It's well-done and (I assume) pretty accurate. However, if you're looking for something a bit lighter, you might want to to look somewhere else.
Rating:
Summary: Right on the money
Review: Mathematician David Deutsch says a QUANTUM COMPUTER could be programmed to do just what Lord Voldemort's magic diary could do in "The Chamber of Secrets". MIT is using NANOTECHNOLOGY and a technique called "phased array optics" to build an INVISIBILITY CLOAK (for the Pentagon, unfortunately). It should be perfected in about 20 years.
Rating:
Summary: interesting
Review: OK - so you're a parent - and you know your kid(s) are completely under the Harry Potter spell. How do you use this Harry Potter obsession to maybe get them to learn some 'almost real' science (some of the science discussed in this book is very much in the realm of 'under research' - but a lot of it is associated with existing prototypes/applications - even if in a very limited form...)
I think the concept of the book is original - it tries to leverage the natural curiousity of the vast majority of HP readers - and use it to convey some cutting-edge discoveries of science. Note that most kids will have a hard time understanding a lot of the science topics in this book - without the help of parents. Quantum physics, relativity, psychology of time etc. - are not exactly middle school subjects... Still - it is a good book for adults and children - who have a natural curiosity for all scientific things (and who are, obviously, HP fans). I enjoyed the book.
Rating:
Summary: Nice Concept Doesn't Come Off
Review: Reading this book is much like eating a Hershey's chocolate bar. It is a wonderful idea ~ what a concept! ~ and entirely delicious in the way it has been worked out. That is, unless the person eating it happens to be someone who's actually eaten chocolate previously. In that case, it is a waste of time; a bar of paraffin wax has a more chocolaty texture, and its flavour is not too far behind. I wanted to like Highfield's book ~ just as i want to like Hershey's bars ~ but i couldn't. Compared with the masters of general science writing, Highfield is just a little too forced, when writing about Harry Potter, anyway. He might have done better to have left the Potter references out altogether, and simply write a book of science ~ although he would then have lost his pretext for writing ~ so intrusive do i find them in the text. There are several times that i found myself truly enjoying the writing, so Highfield can do it; most notably, memorably, when he was talking about the wizard in our heads, and how it can deceive us, and about the origins of and necessity for belief. If only the whole bar could have had that flavour and consistency.
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