The Great Physicists from Galileo to Einstein

Rating:
Summary: An excellent overview of discoveries in physics.
Review: I have read a fair amount of books on physics and found this one to be very enjoyable. Gamow keeps things pretty simple (until the end when he starts talking about his specialty) and very accessible. He is careful that the math is sequential; he always builds on previous examples to take you to the next step.

The book was published in the 60's, so there are many recent discoveries missing, but you need to know your history of physics to see how we got where we are. In fact, I found that this book showed just how new all of our current theories are and that there is promise for many new things on the horizon.