Asimov's latest scientific guide.

This popular science masterpiece has been published for nearly 40 years, during which it has been revised and reprinted four times. The earliest edition was called "A Guide to Science for Smart People", which was published in 1960. As soon as it came out, the book was widely praised and nominated for the National Book Award in the United States, and it became a bestseller at once. The science guide was originally written for adults, but it turned out to be the treasure of teenagers.

1965, the second edition of the book, A Guide to New Science for Smart People, was revised and published, with new contents such as quasars and lasers added. However, the development of science soon surpassed the past, and new discoveries and new things such as pulsars, black holes, continental drift, human landing on the moon and holography appeared one after another, so Asimov revised this book and published it in 1972. This time, the title is simply called Asimov's Guide to Science. With the continuous progress of science, mankind has a new theory about the expansion of the universe and the extinction of dinosaurs, as well as quarks, gluons, unified field theory, magnetic monopoles, energy crisis, household appliances, robots and oncogenes. So it's time to publish another book.

Asimov said in the preface of 1984 edition: Because I changed the title of every new edition in the past, this time is no exception. The title of this time is "The Latest Science Guide". "Now it seems that the scientific knowledge introduced in this book can no longer be called the latest, because the development of science is changing with each passing day and never stops. Nevertheless, most important scientific achievements in human history have been included in this book by Asimov.

The Chinese version of Asimov's Guide to Science was published by Science Press as early as 1976, which was all the rage. Reprinted three times in three years, each time exceeding 300,000 copies. At that time, there was no advertisement for books, and there was no signature sale of books, so the circulation was considerable. Indeed, teenagers and many adults at that time were very interested in popular science books, and a group of Asimov fans appeared. Yin Chuanhong, the deputy editor-in-chief of Science and Technology Daily, recently wrote an article about how he went to bookstores all over the city to buy a science guide when he was in middle school in the early 1980s. It was very interesting to read.