INVENTION

An ``Eyewitness'' book based on beautiful photographs of items in the British Science Museum, accompanied by a superficial text with smarmy, labored paragraph headings. The credits involve at least 40 people in addition to the author; the final conglomeration can be inconsistent—e.g., the same firebow is shown on two pages with different, conflicting captions—with lots of mislabeled pictures here, and little basic science or discussion of why the inventions were important. Handsome but slight. Index. (Nonfiction. 8-12)