Lately I've found myself skimming, barely finishing, or indeed, not finishing most of the popular science books I read, especially those predominantly devoted to breaking the universe down in a predictable pattern, starting with Newton or sometimes Galileo or sometimes Democritus and building - or should I say, deconstructing - the universe up - down - into its most constituent parts. Even with those books released in the last year or two, I just keep swipe-swipe-swiping, internally shouting, "YES YES WE KNOW. GET TO THE GOOD STUFF, YOU KNOW, THE WEIRD STUFF. C'MON MAN, I NEED A HIT OF THOSE QUANTUM CHROMODYNAMICS."

...

Just me?

Anyway, yes, I often find myself doing that.

I did not do this this time.

It completely baffles me that this is Harry Cliff's (file under names that are also common nouns, which is in the same document organizer as the list of names that are declarative phrases a la Harry Styles and Jeremy Irons) first book. His writing is so fluid, so familiar, so...

So goddamn <i>funny</i>.

Yes, reader, this was one of those books where I would try to read a passage aloud to my partner because it was one of the funniest goddamned things I'd ever read, and to my dismay he would not even crack a smile, and I would say, "Well first let me tell you about sphalerons. So, you know about wave-particle duality?" and he would invariably say no, and I would exclaim my indignity at his lack of understanding or even knowledge of the double slit experiment, and I would demand to know just how on earth I could tell him about one of the funniest goddamn things I'd ever read if he didn't even know how electrons worked.

And he, invariably, would not care.

But <i>I</i>, reader, I cared. Because it was one of the funniest god damned things I'd ever read.

I sure hope Harry Cliff writes more books, because his utterly unique retelling of that oft-told tale of how we all got here, for the first time in a long time, made me care again. Made me want to learn again. Made me want to reexamine the things I maybe hadn't really understood the first time around so that I could better understand whatever it might be that comes next - or maybe just so that I could better tell my partner utterly hilarious sphaleron anecdotes. Mr. Cliff, sir, you do Carl Sagan proud.

And, spoilers:

It ends with an actual apple pie recipe. And a recipe for the universe.

Harry Cliff takes the title for his wonderful non-fiction work, How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch, from the TV series Cosmos, the original one narrated by Carl Sagan, not the most recent Neil DeGrasse Tyson version (you should watch both, btw). Early on in his book, Cliff recounts how in one of the episodes Sagan “turns to the camera and with a twinkle in his eye says, ‘If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.’” Well, in the 40 years since Cosmos, humans have managed to figure out a few more ingredients and a few more steps in the recipe, and Cliff is here — with his own stylistic twinkle — to explain it to those of us who aren’t astrophysicists, particle physicists, theoretical phys-, well, let’s just say those of us who remember rolling a ball down an incline in high school but don’t recall why we did that (also for those of us who remember setting our lab tables aflame and do recall why we did that . . . )

Cliff calls the search for the recipe of the universe, “humankind’s most ambitious intellectual journey: the centuries long quest to uncover nature’s most basic ingredients.” And while it’s in part a personal story, delving into Cliff’s own work at the CERN collider complex, it’s mostly “the story of how thousands of people working over hundreds of years gradually discovered the fundamental ingredients of nature and traced their origins out into the cosmos, through the hearts of dying stars, and back to the first furious moments of the big bang.” That’s a heck of a tour, and Cliff makes for the best kind of tour guide: knowledgeable but not condescending or arrogant, funny but knowing when to pull out the jokes and when not to, eloquent but aware of when to let the awe of the spectacle itself do the work, relatable and charming but not smarmily gladhanding, and contagiously enthusiastic. All of which creates a work of top-notch popular science.

The universe is a pretty big topic, and so it’s no surprise that Cliff wends his way pretty widely across time and space. The book is generally structured by moving from the “big” building blocks — elements — and then showing how once we had those in place, we began to break down the “unbreakable” into atoms, protons, quarks, and so forth. Thanks to the structure, the book moves broadly chronologically — the Higgs Particle a more recent discovery than quarks, themselves more recent than protons — but not strictly chronologically, as in each section we wind our way back in time to the beginning suspicions of something new, then move forward to tracking down the quarry, finding it, figuring out what it all means, then moving on to the next layer and again, going back to when we first realized there might another layer, etc. Which sounds perhaps more confusing than it actually reads. Despite all the movement in time and space as we follow various scientists and experiments, we are always clear on where and when we are: 18th Century France, 19th Century England, early 20th Century Germany, late 20th Century Switzerland, 21st Century Italy (one of the strengths of Cliff’s work is how up to date it is)

In fact, almost nothing in How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch is confusing. I’m going to repeat that, because in a work of popular science, this is all-important, and in a work discussing particle physics/quantum theory, it’s nigh on astonishing: almost nothing in How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch is confusing. Cliff is consistently, always methodical, lucid, precise, and patient. He takes exactly as much time as is needed to explain an experiment, a theory, how an experiment proves or disproves a theory. And he has a true gift, as any popularizer of science must, of creating analogies to make the esoteric more mundane and thus more comprehensible. As when he compares the nucleus’ repulsive electric field to “the steeply rising ramparts of a heavily fortified castle,” explaining how “To storm the keep, a proton needs to be moving fast enough so it can ‘jump’ to the top of the walls.” An analogy which he returns to several times for other concepts, allowing the reader to focus on the idea at the heart rather than trying to track another metaphor. Cliff offers up multiple examples of clarifying analogies; his explanations of quantum fields versus regular fields and of the difference between global and local symmetries are perhaps the best I’ve read, as in the easiest to follow.

He also makes use of illustrations — charts and graphs and tables — when they will be helpful (as with a listing of the relationships between particles and forces) but doesn’t overload the reader with them. Nor does he overwhelm the reader by being overly dense. Instead, he wonderfully balances the scientific explanations with less esoteric segments: sketches of the significant figures such as Einstein or Dirac or Rutherford, personal anecdotes of his own experiences as a grad student or working at CERN, personal interviews with other scientists, descriptions of the fantastic machines being employed, and others. Meanwhile, math makes almost no appearance here at all. One time it does, Cliff confesses he is “going to commit a cardinal sin of popular science writing and show you the equation I am babbling on about” and then offers up (iγμ∂μ − m) ψ = 0. And no, I have no idea what that says; it took me 20 minutes just to figure out how to type it. But you forgive Cliff’s “cardinal sin” thanks to his enthusiasm, which just leaps off the page:

[Dirac] had discovered an equation of near incomparable beauty … like you might recognize beauty in the smooth clean lines of a sailing ship. Dirac’s equation had a piercing simplicity … a razor-sharp blade cutting through a dense tangle of undergrowth … So simple, so elegant, and yet so powerful … Isn’t it a gorgeous thing?

I don’t know if I see its beauty, but I can feel how Cliff does and even understand why he does, and that’s enough for me. Just as important, I don’t feel ignorant for not seeing its beauty. Cliff never makes the reader feel dumb. And in fact, he cops to his own lack of knowledge in several areas, more than once admitting he had a hard time following or recalling in detail what one of his interview subjects was explaining. Even if I’m sure at least some of that was exaggerated self-deprecation, I appreciated it. Just as I appreciated the humor that runs throughout, which never (or rarely) felt forced and never felt like it was trying to draw attention to the author as opposed to the topic.

One of my tests for how good a non-fiction work is how much highlighting I’ve done. And I did a lot here. But the way I can tell this is not just good, but superlative is that I highlighted material I already knew because I so liked the way Cliff put it. By now I’ve read a lot of popular science books, and a lot of those have been on the topics of particle physics, quantum mechanics, cosmology, but off the top of my head, and even stopping to think about it for a minute or two, I can’t think of one, at least not that I’ve read in the past few years, that was so consistently clear, accessible, engaging, exciting, and witty. It’ll certainly be on my top ten (almost assuredly top five) list of popular science books for 2021. I hope that in a few years’ time some of the future experiments Cliff discusses bear fruit, and that Cliff has the time and desire to pen another book on what we’ve learned. Like the vanilla ice cream on top of that apple pie.

5 Stars

accessible, fun, informative

I am grateful to Doubleday Books for sending me a copy of this book for review.

This is the book I will be recommending to people now who are interested in particle physics but have a limited scientific background. I think it accomplished everything it set out to do.

The strength of this book is its structure. The book reads like an interesting narrative that presents the information and concepts in a very digestible way. I bet you wouldn't expect me to describe a non-fiction physics book as a "multiple timeline story" or to talk about the writing style of the author, but here we are. Cliff presents us with two timelines: one where he chronicles his journey through his scientific career, and another where he takes us chronologically through the history of the field. We are introduced to the big name movers and shakers of physics, but him connecting this history to his own experiences makes it read more like a novel than a textbook.

The second thing that stands out is the overall tone of the writing. The light conversational tone made the information here feel very accessible and almost casual. I did NOT feel like a text book in any way. The author maintained two consistent themes throughout; referencing Carl Sagan's Cosmos, and the whole apple pie recipe concept. The recipe format really served to simplify the explanations, and the cohesiveness of it made the reading experience fun.

Let's talk about the information itself. I think the strength of this book is in how accessible it makes these topics. Of course the information here is nothing new and there are numerous books that cover these topics, but I think this book is one of the most balanced and well constructed I've come across.

I think this is a great popular science book, and I recommend this to anyone with an interest in learning about particle physics, chemistry, or quantum mechanics regardless of your level of science knowledge.

On the TV show Cosmos, Carl Sagan said "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." Harry Cliff actually tries to discuss how that would work in this book. Exploring particle physics from the first understandings of molecules and atoms down through supersymmetry and string theory, we get a primer of the biggest ideas in the field in the last 150 years or so.

Overall, Dr. Cliff is an excellent writer and it's very easy to follow what he's talking about. Although these are some big, complicated topics, he focuses on only as much detail as we really need to get a grasp on the topic and he writes in a very casual, conversational style that makes it enjoyable. I definitely like getting an overview of particle physics without a lot of math. I look forward to seeing anything else this author decides to write!

If you've ever wondered what elements are responsible for forming the universe we live in, or which ingredients are required to create matter, preserve energy, enforce gravity, making life as we know it possible, then this book needs to make a speed of light descent into your hands. And I mean soon.

What's inside is a story. A recipe. An accessible yet comprehensive history, really, where the author details how scientists have slowly uncovered the fundamental components of matter over the last couple of centuries and have traced their origins back billions of years, to the violent spectacle of The Big Bang and beyond.

With a wooden spoon in hand, the author, Harry Cliff, swirls readers into a scientifically cooked and still cooking quest for understanding about the cosmos.

Where does matter come from? Which parts of the atom are divisible? How many different kinds of forces are there? What are they?

How did quantum fields come to be considered the building blocks of all matter? Does supersymmetry exist in nature? Where? How?

Why are neutrinos called "ghostly" particles?

What is the ultimate origin of everything? Are we closer to having the answer or will it continue to remain out of reach, impossible to explain?


These are the kinds of questions Cliff ladles into readers' purview, straining them into easily digestible curdles of information which highlight both how far we've come in being able to find, know, and predict the building blocks of the universe and how much farther we still have to go.

Step by step, ingredient after ingredient, he sprinkles in summaries of some of science's greatest discoveries, from the atom to relativity to the Higgs boson. He stirs in explanations of complicated concepts like up and down quarks, cosmic microwave backgrounds, and quantum and Higgs fields, underlining their significance with relatable metaphor and analogy so the layperson can wrap their head around what they are.

He also sifts through the major hurdles or roadblocks scientists still face in the road ahead. Like the idea that reductionism could be false. Like how there are no particles or quantum fields in the standard model that could be dark matter or energy. Like the fact that no one understands why the Higgs field settled at the perfect Goldilocks value that has made the existence of atoms possible. Like how, on their own, quantum mechanics and general relativity both fail the closer they approach the moment of The Big Bang.

An engaging, electron banging read all around!

For someone who has only a perfunctory grasp of particle physics, chemistry, and cosmology, I came out of this book feeling full. I wasn't stuffed with so much technical knowledge I was intimidated by it. Rather, I felt satisfied to be enlightened with a more well-rounded understanding of what elements make the universe...the universe.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for the ARC.

How did the universe begin? How did we end up with a universe where life on Earth is possible? That's the subject of this book. It tells the history of how the elementary particles were discovered, and how (we believe) they were created in the first microseconds after the Big Bang.

This book is easy to read and comprehensive. I had no more than a cursory knowledge of particle physics before reading this book, and now I feel like I have a good grounding in it. The author's style is conversational and often humorous, making this book entertaining as well as informative to read.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

All educated people know chemistry is the foundation of modern science. But what if, like me, your grasp of high school and college chemistry was weak and maybe has even faded with time? Or maybe never really took root in the first place? Cliff takes the reader through modern chemistry from it’s earliest beginnings in the dreams of the alchemists to the modern intersections of chemistry and physics and our newest insights into how the world holds together. Without condescending, he weaves a narrative history that never skims the important scientific detail while including enough of the personal stories behind the science to help even the less scientifically minded engage with the material and remember it. A gem of a book.