Galileo's Commandment: An Anthology of Great Science Writing edited by Edmund Blair Bolles W. H. Freeman, $26.95 A bumper collection that ranges widely across time and disciplines, from Herodotus on the Nile Valley to Isaac Asimov on death in the laboratory. The editor, who introduces each piece, divides the book into three parts: an opening section in which scientists try to understand science, a long middle section that shows how the scientific imagination attempts to understand nature, and a third section in which writers transform scientific efforts into literary achievements.

Great Essays in Science edited by Martin Gardner OUP, £8.99 (pbk) First published in 1957 and later reissued under the title The Sacred Beetle and Other Great Essays in Science, this anthology aims, in Gardner's words, “to spread before the reader, whether his or her interest in science be passionate or mild, a sumptuous feast of great writing — absorbing, thought-disturbing pieces that have something important to say about science and say it forcibly and well”. “There are many pleasurable surprises in this highly individual selection”, wrote Nature's reviewer of an earlier edition.

Essential Classics in Science CD-ROM edited by John Gribbin and Pat Coyne Electric Book Company, 20 Cambridge Drive, London SE12 8AJ, UK (tel./fax: +44 (0)181 488 3872; e-mail: pat-coyne@geo2.poptel.org.uk),£19.95 Complete and unabridged works by Darwin (Origin of Species), Einstein (The Meaning of Relativity), Faraday (The Chemical History of a Candle), Lyell (Elements of Geology), Malthus (Essay on the Principle of Population), Maxwell (Matter and Motion) and Wallace (The Malay Archipelago).

Darwin, second edition CD-ROM Lightbinders, 2325 3rd St, Suite 324, San Francisco, California 94107, USA (tel: +1 415 621 5746; fax: +1 415 621 5898; e-mail: darwin@lbin.com),$49.95 Reproduces all of Darwin's major works, a selection of his lesser-known short papers and his 1,200-page monograph on barnacles. Also included are an extensive timeline, biographical dictionary and bibliography of 1,500 primary and secondary sources as well as the text of Michael T. Ghiselin's Triumph of the Darwinian Method.

New Journals Next week's issue will contain Nature's annual New Journals review supplement.