Science. Does the word fill you with excitement, or dread, or something in between?

Science - and the art of science writing - can, and should, be something to get excited about. The extracts featured in this anthology span centuries and continents, but are connected by their authors' desire to understand, explain and enrich the world.

The Art of Science is not a book about great scientific theories, complicated equations or grand old men and women in their laboratories; instead, it's about the places we draw our inspiration from; about daily routines and sudden flashes of insight; about dedication, and - sometimes - desperation; and the small moments, questions, quests, clashes, doubts and delights that ultimately make us human.

From Galileo to Lewis Carroll, from Humphry Davy to Charles Darwin, from Marie Curie to Stephen Jay Gould, from rust to snowflakes, from the first use of the word `scientist' to the first computer, from why the sea is salty to Newtonian physics `for the ladies', The Art of Science is a book about people, which is to say it's a book about passion, politics, and poetry. Above all, though, it's a book about the good that science, and scientific thinking, can - and does - do.