The Canon of Scientific Literacy

While performing my regular searches on new physics stories across the web, I was pleased to stumble upon "Physics is Fun!" in The Times Literary Supplement. A title like this tends to catch my attention, but I wasn't sure what to expect. It turns out that this article is a review of The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier.

I have a copy of Angier's book sitting on my "to read and review" stack, but I am greatly looking forward to it. I really enjoyed the grand ideas of science presented in James Trefil's Why Science? and look forward to seeing Angier's take on the "basics of science." Trefil's focus was more on the idea of scientific literacy than on a "whirligig tour," but both books seem to be trying to place the whole of scientific knowledge in a universal context (something which was also attempted by Bill Bryson's fascinating A Short History of Nearly Everything).

It's an ambitious project which many have tried and there are some noteworthy examples of where such projects have proven successful. What's your vote for the best book to provide a general overview of science as a whole?