This weekly, readable science magazine runs about ten pages per issue and covers the widest range of topics. There are usually two feature articles and then some updates and tidbits. The writing is targeted for a lay audience but it is not dumbed down and, being so short and to the point, it lacks any of the fluff of thicker, glossier magazines.

This is, as you may have gathered from the title of this 'review' a commentary on Amazon and not the magazine (which I highly recommend).

Amazon claims to be saving you $113 over the normal subscription price when actually they are saving you $11.53. To be sure a savings, but hardly the 72% they claim. One need only visist the Science News website to confirm this.

I'm not sure how long Science News has been in print, but I remember it from my childhood and that was over 40 years ago. And desprite all the competition from glossy rags like "Discover" and the newly-denatured "Scientific American", Science News survives pretty much unchanged form its earliest days.

The formula is simple: Brief summaries of contemporary science stories that are written for lay readers who are interested in science, and not in personalities or politics. Science News doesn't insult the reader by dumbing things down- and at the same time it doesn't bury stories in jargon or indeciperable formulas.

Well written, concise, and equally readable by the intelligent child or the curious adult.

Science News, published by a non-profit organization, Science Service, for 80 years, is a weekly 16-page magazine reporting the most important recent research in all fields of science, all for less than a dollar per issue. It is jam-packed with brief and accurate articles primarily aimed at general readers; scientists also use it to keep up with developments in fields other than their own. For those wishing to read more about the content of a specific article, the reader is generally told where to look in the scientific literature. The writing is very clear - several of its reporters have received national and international awards for science writing.

It also has a very well-organized online version - partial contents for non-subscribers, complete contents for subscribers; it has some features not found in the print version.

This is the best science magazine out there. The name says it all. It comes every week, is short enought that I can read it one sitting, and containts succinct articles on a broad range of topics that help me keep up on science news. Instead of massive rambling 10 page aritcles about completely random subjects like some other mags, (hint: Scientific American) it just delivers exactly what I want. This subscription alone will handle your science news fix.