When I suggested to Simon Capelin that Cambridge University Press think about publishing a collection of my non-technical and pedagogical writings in and about physics, he responded politely, but expressed his concern that “a major problem is going to be trying to invent some sort of theme to the book.”

“No need for invention,” I thought. I have always felt that these essays and the aspect of my career as a physicist they embody have a greater unity and coherence than the rather diffuse and opportunistic conglomeration of my more technical efforts. But spelling this out has been a painful process. By putting my finger on the common thread of excitement and concern that led me to write them, I can't help feeling that I'm killing the magic some of these articles had (and still have) for me. I'd rather leave it to the reader to find (or fail to find) what I'm up to (or think I'm up to). But editors must be served, so here I go.

What the essays have in common is a concern with the problem of scientific communication. Some are addressed to a general audience, some to students, and some to other physicists; some are about physics, some about the tools of physics, and some about the practice of physics. But all share a preoccupation with both the substance and the style of written scientific communication.

Over the past fifty years or so, scientists have allowed the conventions of expression available to them to become entirely too confining.