A Shortcut Through Time: The Path to the Quantum Computer by George Johnson (Knopf, 2003) aims to explain how a quantum computer would work to nonspecialists.

The book uses “clocks, tops, and waves to explain a Tinkertoy version of quantum computing that quickly gets the reader involved and hungry to learn more,” according to a review in the June 6 Science.

“The science in the book is fairly accurate, and the few minor lacunae are small enough to ignore when one considers the benefit: Johnson’s powerful illustrative analogies and nearly kinesthetic accounts of how quantum computers function.”