This treasure of popular science by the Russian biophysicist Mikhail V. Volkenstein is at last, more than twenty years after its appearance in Russian, available in English translation.

As its title Entropy and Information suggests, the book deals with the thermodynamical concept of entropy and its interpretation in terms of information theory. The author shows how entropy is not to be considered a mere shadow of the central physical concept of energy, but more appropriately as a leading player in all of the major natural processes: physical, chemical, biological, evolutionary, and even...