Table of Contents

1. A Winter's Tale: The Six-Pointed Snowflake; 2. Tenuous Monsters: Shapes Between Dimensions; 3. Just For the Crack: Clean Breaks and Ragged Ruptures; 4. Water Ways: Labyrinths in the Landscape; 5. Tree and Leaf: Branches in Biology; 6. Web Worlds: Why We're All in This Together; 7. The Threads of the Tapestry: Principles of Pattern; Bibliography

About the Author

Philip Ball is a freelance writer and a consultant editor for Nature, where he previously worked as an editor for physical sciences. He is a regular commentator in the scientific and popular media on science and its interactions with art, history and culture. His ten books on scientific subjects include The Self-Made Tapestry: Pattern Formation in Nature, H2O: A Biography of Water, The Devil's Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science, and Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads To Another, which won the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books. He was awarded the 2006 James T. Grady - James H. Stack award by the American Chemical Society for interpreting chemistry for the public. Philip studied chemistry at Oxford and holds a doctorate in physics from the University of Bristol. His latest book The Music Instinct published in February 2010.

Reviews

Wideranging, intelligent and non-dogmatic triology of books. Martin Kemp, Times Literary Supplement 'Branches' is a slim tome, generously illustrated with photographs, charts and mathematical models. Financial Times,