Mixed bag. Starting with the title: why "creation"? what's the got to do with science? some notable omissions such as R. Feynman, Sir j Jeans, Carl Sagan. But worse the inclusions are distinctly odd. Wallace's piece struggling surreptitiously to bring God back into the story, a piece written for kids which is hardly classic, from HG Wellls an autobiographical sketch which is amusing but not really science. should really be subtitled "byways in science writing". ( )

A collection of science writings from the seventeenth century to the twentieth. The goal of the editor is to counter the idea that scientists can't write, and that their prose is flat and dull. Some of his selections succeed; others not so much. Overall, it's a mixed bag, and I found some of his choices peculiar. For instance, for Charles Darwin he didn't include anything from Origin, in spite of the fact that one of the most beautiful pieces of science writing ever is the concluding paragraphs to that book; he chose a relatively dull portion of his autobiography instead. Some of the pieces were quite short; those were in many ways the best pieces. There were a few that were way too long, and not particularly interesting. He includes Colin Tudge, who has done some wonderful writing on natural history, so why did he give us a selection on nutrition? Strange. Still, there are some decent pieces in here, and if you want, you can always pick and choose, rather than reading all of them. ( )