The Science Class You Wish You Had (D. E. Brody and A. R. Brody)

The Science Class You Wish You Had: The Seven Greatest Scientific Discoveries in History and the People Who Made Them (David E. Brody and Arnold R. Brody)

I used to teach history and philosophy of science, and every term I would have to review basic historical material on Greek and Medieval science (especially Aristotelian natural philosophy), the challenges to Aristotelian science from early modern figures like Galileo, Kepler and Newton, the origins of Darwinian evolutionary theory, basic concepts in genetics, basic elements of human prehistory, and so on.

I started using this book to help teach that material, and it was very effective. It's pitched at just the right level for what I was using it for, and it certainly helped students acquire a broader understanding of key ideas in science and the modern scientific worldview.

Real historians of science may find quite a bit to criticize in the presentation, but that is the case for almost all popular treatments of the history of science. The detailed history is often quite a bit different from how it is presented in popular texts. But as a tool for teaching key ideas in the history of science, it's a very good book.