Hunting Down the Universe, by Michael Hawkins (Abacus, £7.99 in UK)

The scientific community, and specifically the cosmology community, must hate Michael Hawkins. In this eminently readable and accessible book, he has not only dissolved the self-serving smokescreen of mystery with which his discipline surrounds itself, but also spilled the beans with regard to the squalid and vicious bickering which goes on between its various internal factions. The effect is as if, one minute, he invites you to look down a microscope to examine the embarrassed wrigglings of a colleague he has pinned mercilessly on to a slide; the next, he directs your avid gaze into the sights of a telescope focused on the outer edges of the universe. No matter how plainly a cosmologist speaks, of course, the concepts he is discussing are never going to be easy for the lay reader to get hold of: but in this case, it's well worth a little extra effort.