Martin Gardner is a prolific author. I had no idea that he wrote around 70 (or more) books. He passed away back in 2010, and I always knew of his math and puzzles background, but I did not know that he ventured into other areas like physics, philosophy, some literature, and magic. If you want an overview of his thoughts on all of these areas, this book would be a good place to start.

Based on the title, I thought he would delve more into physics, but he only had one or two chapters on the topic. For the rest of the book consisting of 31 chapters, he expounded on philosophy, religion, mathematics, general science, literature, and various pseudoscientific topics (such as distant healing and ESP.)

Many of the chapters were reprinted from other sources, such as book reviews or some of his magazine articles.

I did learn of a new word – the clerihew, which is “a whimsical, four-line biographical poem.” So says Wikipedia.

Based on this, I would not be afraid to pick up one of his other numerous books.