Interspersed with some personal observations (he seems prone to falling down), Panek writes an accessible overview of our beliefs and thinking about gravity over time, from the Greek philosophers to modern scientists. It's not a particularly technical book, but even so, I sometimes had problems following the theories and ideas outlined -- a fault of the reader and not the author, I assure you.

I do think that some of the principles and ideas described could have done with a bit of illustration, although the chapter heading graphics were amusing. The early parts of the book were a bit slow for me, but once it got to Einstein, it picked up a bit. I'm attracted to books about physics, although I rarely get out of them what the authors put in.

Also, while reading this I found myself purposefully dropping things and watching them "fall."