Books: World with a Difference

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THE WORLD WE LIVE IN (304 pp.)—The Editorial Staff of LIFE and Lincoln Barnett—TIME, Inc. ($13.50 regular; $15.50 deluxe).

Scientists suffer from a peculiar problem: the more they learn, the more complicated their subject becomes. Probing forever past the boundaries of knowledge, the scientist too often is impatient, too seldom has time to learn a language equal to his vision. Too quickly he takes refuge in words that reek of the laboratory, writes reports that plod through complex formulas. The layman must wait for someone to translate science into the words of the world it seeks to explain.

The editors of LIFE have done a large part of the job. Sifting, shuffling, simplifying the long record of man's intellectual explorations, they have put together The World We Live In, a history (which originally appeared in a memorable series of articles) of what man has learned about his home in the universe. From the dry and brittle bones of paleontology to the vast reaches of cosmography. Author Lincoln Barnett's text moves easily through many disciplines. Zoology, biology, the changing geography of earth—the exciting stuff that could once seem deadly in school-year homework—take on a new-dimension. The superb paintings and photographs that range through time and space somehow succeed in recording the life of the world within the pages of a book. As sharp and clear as the remarkable pictures, the text is always in focus.

This is indeed, as Scientist Vannevar Bush, wartime Chief of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, writes in his introduction, "journalism with a difference." It is a book for every man with a modicum of curiosity about his place on the globe that whirls him through infinity. And such curiosity is a common itch; already The World We Live In has sold 516,000 copies, should easily sell its total printing of 650,000.

The world man lives in is a world whose outlines waver darkly and will change as long as scientists peer through the deep and murky waters of time. But what has been seen so far can be seen clearly in The World We Live In—smaller than life size but big in meaning.