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Priest of Nature: The Religious Worlds of Isaac Newton, Rob Iliffe, Oxford U. Press, 2019, $24.95 (paper)

Rob Iliffe is a professor of history of science at Oxford University and a general editor of the Newton Project, an ambitious effort to put all of Isaac Newton’s published and unpublished writings online. He brings a lifetime of Newton scholarship to Priest of Nature: The Religious Worlds of Isaac Newton. The book explores Newton’s largely unpublished research into Christian theology, Biblical prophecy, and church history—projects that Newton himself considered at least as important as his mathematical work—and untangles the complicated picture that emerges from them of Newton’s religious beliefs. Newton came to some conclusions that were outright heretical for his day, including his firm rejection of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. First published to wide acclaim in 2017, Priest of Nature is now available in paperback. Anyone interested in Newton’s life and thought will want a copy for their bookshelves. —mb

Symphony in C: Carbon and the Evolution of (Almost) Everything, Robert M. Hazen, W. W. Norton, 2019, $26.95

“We live on a carbon planet and we are carbon life,” Robert Hazen tells us in the prologue of his new book Symphony in C. Carbon makes our DNA possible, forms the chemical backbone of thousands of synthetic materials, and is the heart of the fossil fuels that made the Industrial Revolution possible and that are now causing a climate crisis. Given all that it does, carbon might seem like too vast a subject for a single book, but geophysicist and accomplished science writer Hazen manages to bring together physics, chemistry, geology, and history to tell carbon’s story in less than 300 pages. Told in four “movements”—Earth, Air, Fire, and Water—Symphony in C explores carbon’s role in everything from the Big Bang to volcanic eruptions to the evolution of life on Earth. —mb

Cosmos: The Art and Science of the Universe, Roberta J. M. Olson and Jay M. Pasachoff, Reaktion Books, 2019, $49.95

Featuring hundreds of beautiful illustrations, paintings, prints, and photographs, Cosmos: The Art and Science of the Universe explores astronomical phenomena and humans’ fascination with them throughout history, as evidenced by depictions in works of art. The book is the result of a collaboration between astronomer Jay Pasachoff and art historian Roberta Olson, who spent the past three decades collecting the images that would feature in this interdisciplinary study. Complementing the imagery is a narrative that chronicles developments in both astronomy and art over the past several millennia. —cc

Fake Physics: Spoofs, Hoaxes and Fictitious Science, Andrew May, Springer, 2019, $27.99 (paper)

Astrophysicist Andrew May’s third volume in Springer’s Science and Fiction series, Fake Physics: Spoofs, Hoaxes and Fictitious Science, is a playful exploration of the boundary between science fiction and science fact. Meant to entertain rather than to expose fraud, the book covers such topics as the art of technobabble, spoof papers in science journals, April Fool’s Day joke articles, several amusing “sting operations” aimed at predatory journals, and thought experiments that apply scientific methods to subjects more associated with sci-fi, like Fermi’s paradox regarding extraterrestrial civilizations. Aimed at a general audience, Fake Physics touches on physics principles in an entertaining and engaging way. —cc

Underland: A Deep Time Journey, Robert Macfarlane, W. W. Norton, 2019, $27.95

“Underland is a story of journeys into darkness, and of descents made in search of knowledge.” Thus writes author Robert Macfarlane, a fellow of Cambridge University. In this literary narrative, Macfarlane writes eloquently about some of the myriad mysterious spaces that lie beneath Earth’s surface. Not only does he describe in lush detail the caves, catacombs, glacial ice, sinkholes, and other features he has explored, he also writes about their history and uses over time. Along the way, he meets and befriends fellow explorers, spelunkers, and diverse others. His numerous anecdotes and beautiful descriptions of natural phenomena make for a highly readable account of Earth’s geography, history, and natural wonders. —cc

The Trouble with Gravity: Solving the Mystery Beneath Our Feet, Richard Panek, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019, $28.00

Nobody knows exactly what causes gravity, but to award-winning science writer Richard Panek, that’s no obstacle to a fascinating discussion about its history. Despite the book’s subtitle, Panek says early on that he has no solutions to the mystery of gravity. Instead, his book brings in research from philosophy, mythology, and the history of science to explore how the force of gravity has affected human bodies, thought, and culture. The first chapter, for example, considers how gravity affected the architecture of our religious worldviews: The gods are up there and we are down here. To be human is to be bound by gravity, and although some like Icarus may try to get into the divine realm, Panek says, we always fall in the end. This is not a book about the science of gravity, but if you want to wonder how gravity has shaped us and our world, Panek will wonder with you. —jo