Overview

Schneider and Sagan organize their argument in a highly accessible manner, moving from descriptions of the basic physics behind energy flow to the organization of complex systems to the role of energy in life to the final section, which applies their concept of energy flow to politics, economics, and even human health. A book that needs to be grappled with by all those who wonder at the organizing principles of existence, Into the Cool will appeal to both humanists and scientists. If Charles Darwin shook the world by showing the common ancestry of all life, so Into the Good has a similar power to disturb - and delight - by showing the common roots in energy flow of all complex, organized, and naturally functioning systems.

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Reviews

In Into the Cool, Eric Schneider and Dorion Sagan unravel the intricacies of cosmology, meteorology, chemistry, ecology and even the mysteries of human aging in an unexpected but accessible and entertaining manner. It's all very simple. It's all very complex. The book careens between these poles like a pinball in urgent play, until the reader is forced, willy-nilly, to think in terms of energy flow, gradients, and The Second Law. This turns out to be something of a delight, like using a new tool specially sharpened and specifically made for that job that we all assume when we first ask, 'why?' - Tim Cahill, author of Hold the Enlightenment and Lost in My Own Backyard

Author Information

"Eric D. Schneider served as senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and director of the National Marine Water Quality Laboratory of the Environmental Protection Agency. His work on thermodynamics - a topic he has pursued for more than twenty years - has been widely anthologized and cited. Dorion Sagan is coauthor of Acquiring Genomes and Up from Dragons. Called an ""unmissable modern master"" of science writing by New Scientist, Sagan has written for the New York Times, Natural History, and Wired, among other publications."

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