Scientific American - is that a contradiction in terms? (Scientific American)

Member Name: pan

Product:	Scientific American
Date:	21/09/01 (36 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: well written, always interesting

Disadvantages: not many

Judging by the actions of US politicians and media pundits, Scientific and American are two words which can be connected using the word: NOT. However, politics aside, Scientific American is an excellent magazine and highly recommended.

It's a monthly magazine, rather than a weekly like New Scientist. One consequence is that there is less attempt at topicality in the magazine, and much more emphasis on the quality of writing and exposition. It also means that you have longer to read each issue before the next one arrives.

Each issue usually has one of two major articles, some shorter pieces, book reviews and a few regular columnists. It's a thin magazine compared to the bloated computer magazines, but it has a very high content to advert ratio.

Like New Scientist the magazine tries to balance an assumption of scientific knowledge but not that you are an expert in any given field. In general this works pretty well, though of course some articles are harder work than others. If you've managed to read a decent pop science book recently you can probably managed Scientific American.

At the end of the day there's a limited choice for popular science magazines: New Scientist, Scientific American and Focus. The latter is the most 'pop' of the three, but it scores on grpahics. New Scientist has good content but overall it's a bit patchy. Scientific American is more consistent, in my opinion at least.

However, I don't have a sub to any of them, I prefer to pick and chose based on the current crop of articles.

Summary: