THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK OF SCIENCE LITERACY

Not a handbook of scientific literacy proper (for that, see Robert M. Hazen & James Trefil's Science Matters, reviewed below), but a marvelously engaging compilation of articles, sidebars, and Q&As from the ""Science Times,"" 1987-1990, which appears regularly every Tuesday in the New York Times. The contributors, including the impressive likes of Jane Brody, James Gleick, Daniel Goleman, Walter Sullivan, and John Noble Wilford, cover a vast if scattered array of timely or intriguing subjects from Gleick on ""Why is the Night Sky Dark?"" to William K. Stevens on ""Our Vanishing Wetlands"" and Gleick, again, on ""Why Does the Knuckleball Behave that Way?"" Flaste, former editor of the ""Science Times,"" corrals the unwieldy material into several workable categories--""Understanding Human Behavior,"" ""Our Troubled Environment,"" ""Curiouser and Curiouser,"" etc.--and provides a good-humored introduction to this cornucopia for science buffs.