Images from the Dictionnaire culturel des sciences (Editions du Regard/Editions du Seuil, 2001, FF495, in French), an eclectic mix of a thousand short articles on science and its influences on and from art, cinema, literature, politics and religion. From ADN (DNA to English speakers) to Zoroastre, this is a book to delight and provoke, in which Niels Bohr keeps company with James Bond and William Blake. 'Beauty' (left) is an advertisement for a beauty product that purported to use radium; 'beast' (right) is an artist's impression of an electron micrograph of a bed-bug, entitled 'Doctor Honoris Causa'.

Credit: FRANCE BOURELY