Sales of Tiger Woods’ Physics Book Way Up

I guess that in scientific publishing, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. The textbook Get a Grip on Physics by John Gribbin, featured in Tiger Woods’ recent SUV crash, has shot up the bestseller list. Its Amazon ranking has moved from 396,224 to 2,268:

Speaking in a break between lectures this morning, the author, John Gribbin, said he was “delighted that anyboy’s reading my books. I just wish it was one that’s still in print.”

Part of a planned series on subject areas which was cancelled after poor sales, Get a Grip on Physics is an illustrated introduction to modern physics first published in 1999 which tells the story of developments in physics since the 1950s, charting the discovery of the four forces of nature, the search for grand unified theories and the beginnings of string theory.

“It’s not a book you sit down and read from cover to cover,” said Gribbin, “you can dip in and out of it. Tiger Woods is absolutely my target audience. He’s busy, hasn’t got a lot of time, but wants to catch up on what’s happening in physics.”

We need to arrange for a celebrity to become embroiled in a major scandal while reading Neatorama.

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