figure a

Michael Berger, as opposed to writing a classical book comprising chapters, has put together a series of stories or essays centred round scientists and researchers covering a very wide and broad area of nanotechnology. To my surprise, to my surprise, the format really works.

Berger starts with a broad scientific nanotechnology paper and develops his essay around this and those involved in the associated work. He successfully includes how nanotechnology is developing in the areas of medicine, chemistry, biology, physics, and electronics.

In total, there are seven essays in the book and once you start reading you will find it very difficult to stop. In fact, you could say this for the whole book. This makes it ideal for that long-haul flight, which, with this book, will pass in no time. However, if you do not finish it on the plane, then it will become an excellent holiday read.

The essays are easy to read and sufficient data are provided, so that you do not need to look up external references, and you are very carefully led through each essay as a very nice story.

This is helped by the fact that all the essays are of a common style.

For the reader who wants to dig deeper into the theory of any of the essays, the author provides details of the featured scientist and provides web addresses and relevant papers, that he has used in the research.

Before reading this book, unless you are a world leader in the subject, you many think that you have a good knowledge on nanotechnology, but after reading the book, I realised that I only had a nanoknowledge of the subject.

All the chapters are good, but for me, an essay that stands out above all the others is essay No. 3 on nanofabrication. At £66.99, the book is worth it for this essay alone.

As you may have gathered, I really liked this book and have no hesitation in recommending it as a really good read.