The official publication date for The Story of Science: From the Writings of Aristotle to the Big Bang is May 11, but copies already seem to be floating around/shipping from online retailers/generally available. (Read this to find out why publication date doesn’t matter.)

In any case, the “late pre-publication” reactions (i.e., not really early enough to be “industry” reviews, but still early enough to be classified as “pre-pub”…kind of like “No’-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock Jock”…OK, I got lost in that parenthetical observation, but now I’m digging out) are starting to appear.

So, here are a few…

A Pick of the Month from Alan Caruba of the National Book Critics Circle. “This book connects the dots, positioning important scientific texts in both their historical and scientific contexts.”

A recommended title in Scientific American.

A Discover Magazine: Science for the Curious “What to Read in June” selection. “Bauer dumbs nothing down but makes complex topics comprehensible in just a few pages apiece.”

Library Journal says, “Bauer does an especially good job of reminding the reader which biological and geological theories were contemporaries of one another.” (Thank you, I worked hard on that.)

And Barnes & Noble calls the book “Science that refreshes.”