Feel like brushing up on physics? Carlo Rovelli is here to help

At one point in my youth, my father thought I was spending too much time reading and unceremoniously instructed me to go outside and do something. According to family legend, I went out the front door with a book, sat under a tree, and resumed reading. Lately I’ve been indulging my reading hunger with books on a couple of subjects that have fascinated me since childhood: aircraft carriers and physics. Geoff Dyer’s account of a visit to a carrier, which I read last week, came out in 2014; my t...