Och it's a huge shame that this book isn't better known--at the moment only two of us here own it and google produced no reviews of it--because it's so oustandingly good, the best science book for general readers that I've come across in the last half-dozen years.

Intimate Universe deals with cosmology and primarily with the effects of past, present, and future occurrences in the universe upon Earth. The discussions of the Big Bang, chemistry of stars, black holes and the like were fascinating in themselves but perhaps the most striking thing I learned from the book was how inextricably entwined are events throughout the cosmos with each other. If you like dig Woodstock man then you already know that we are stardust; you might not have known though that long-ago protoplanets help account for the conditions that allow the presence of humans on Earth (via collision, core composition, tectonic plates, volcanoes). Having read the book I'd be unsurprised to learn that the wings of a butterfly in the Amazon have a bearing on a quasar a million light years distant. Even the sciences specialising in the subjects discussed are enlaced, it seems: Marek explains principles of and uses findings from not only astronomy but geology, meteorology, biology, chemistry, and physics throughout.

Besides being an exciting book, Intimate Universe is a well-written and perfectly-organised one. I know it's dumbed-down simply because I was able to understand it but there's no sign other than that that is; Marek has a great gift for teaching. And he explains as one adult to another, with not a trace of that jokey, over-friendly causual tone that makes so many popular science books unbearable. Nor does he pad the book, as so many writers of popular non-fiction do, with irrelevant drivel ('After debarking the small plane in a sweltering Pago Pago I was met by Professor Russell Johnson, a jovial bespectacled father of 6-year-old twins who is an eminent paleographer.').

The chapter detailing the history of the discoveries that disproved geocentrism lagged a wee bit, perhaps because in this context human history seemed so paltry a concern. And one of those 'Suggested Further Reading' bibliographes would have been nice. The major problem to me though is that this book isn't one of a series of many written by Marek on the subject.