This book provides a rather unique way to look at measurements and the scale of life around us. (This is something Asimov does in some of his F&SF essays, but never as completely or exhaustively as this.) This is in some sense a book of lists, lists of objects all a certain size, or weight, or distance, or something.

The first section of the book, for example, deals with length. First object about a meter long are listed, then objects about 3.16 meters long (that being the approximate square root of ten), then ten meters, then 31.6 meters, and so on all the way up to one octillion meters, which is more than the circumference of the observable Universe. And then we go down: one meter, 0.316 meters, 0.1 meters, and so on.

Along the way we learn some mathematics, a lot about the metric system, and an awful lot about how big things really are and how they compare. Because Asimov handles things on a geometric scale, it becomes relatively easy to head upwards (and downwards) with enormous rapidity and yet get a sense for the relative sizes (or whatever) of various objects.

This book was not an enormous success, which is rather a pity because it’s rather good and definitely worth getting ones hands on if at all possible.