Formula of Unseen Wonders

Perfect for STEM-curious teens, general readers who like their science leavened with jokes, and book clubs looking for something to spark a wild discussion. The math is approachable, and when it is not, the sketches and analogies carry the load.

Possible cautions include a few explosive scenarios, brief mentions of aviation accidents, and a chapter that imagines large animals in extreme environments. I plan to recommend it alongside hands-on demos about heat and airflow.

Murray treats the physical world as a connected system and lets you feel the network. AEC memos talk to Air Force handbooks, buoy data talks to street heat in July, and a wind tunnel in the Netherlands whispers about skyscrapers in Japan.

The results are oddly beautiful. By the time we reach the blue whale in the stratosphere and the glittering mess over the Mojave, the stakes are not shock but comprehension, a sense that every naive hack runs into the texture of fluids, heat, and crowds.

Fun, but my skeptic side kept tally.

• Snappy openings on each question
• Mid-chapter digressions slow momentum
• Clever diagrams that rescue rough math
• Closing takeaways land cleanly

Still worth reading for the jet engine and Skytree thought experiments, just not a new favorite.

This is the rare pop science book that makes absurdity feel like a laboratory for empathy.

If you like the playful rigor of Chad Orzel and the storm-chasing curiosity of Lee Sandlin, you will feast here. The chapters on metronomes humming across Tokyo and every screen in Times Square blasting white are both comic and clarifying, showing how small frictions accumulate into civic scale. I finished with a new respect for engineers who say no, and for the patient notebooks that make the no persuasive.

The structure is a clean set of problem essays, each launching with a bonkers prompt and tightening into method. Murray explains Monte Carlo runs and the guts of old FORTRAN in unfussy prose; her hand-sketched diagrams act as signposts when the math gets foggy.

Pacing wobbles in a few chapters where the detours to declassified memos run long, yet the closing sections snap back with clarity. The timing between setup, calculation, and a mischievous coda is usually just right.

Dr. Amanda Murray shows up on the page like a candid lab mate, wry, tireless, and faintly alarmed at our worst ideas. She answers emails to wind-tunnel techs in Delft and reactor operators in Zaporizhzhia with the same curiosity she brings to pigeons surfing pressure waves.

What I loved is the persona she builds through sardonic footnotes and field notes from Kitt Peak and Mauna Kea. Occasionally the voice leans into showy stunts, but the blend of mischief and caution makes the jet engine on a Boston sidewalk feel like a story about responsibility as much as spectacle.