Book fourteen: A Really Short History Of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

This book would make a great introductory science textbook for older middle school or high school kids. It covers how the universe was formed, what we've learned about the earth (size, composition, etc.) over the years, dinosaurs, chemistry, Newton's theories, Einstein, geology, biology, DNA, atoms, ice ages, early humans, etc. It's fantastic. I totally think you could use this book to get kids excited about science and then use actual (read: boring) textbooks to explain the concepts that are just briefly introduced in this one. Do I need to know this about microbes?

"Perhaps the most extraordinary survival yet found was that of a streptococcus bacterium that was recoverd from the sealed lens of a camera that had stood on the Moon for two years."

No. But it's a good piece of trivia, don't ya think? 14 down plus 38 and volume 1 of the Norton Anthology of English Literature to go.