Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2019 - Science & Technology — Health Sciences — Asian and Asian American Studies

Wise (history, UCLA) has written a rich, wonderfully readable account of the importance of the early-19th-century Berlin Physical Society. In particular, the volume explores scientist Helmholtz's prominence among a group of gifted men who, through multiple aesthetic, economic, and industrial networks, achieved scientific fame during an era formerly thought to be a minor historical interlude between the French Revolution and German unification. A short review cannot do justice to the myriad ideas Wise suggests to account for the fecund developments in industrial design, neoclassic aesthetics, architecture, and friendships among various civilian and military protagonists, including Gerhard von Scharnhorst, Karl Schinkel, Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt, and many more. The author details the variety of military and building academies, museums and their missions, and the publications that issued from these institutions. The beauty of Wise's account is the breadth of coverage, with topics from science, art, pedagogy, industry, architecture, and design woven flawlessly together. Drawing on a varied set of archival, primary, and secondary references, this work will be of great benefit to advanced students. Readers will be pleasantly surprised by the high degree of ingenuity among the young members of the Berlin Physical Society!Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty and professionals.

Lassman (National Air and Space Museum) combines a scientific biography of Edward Condon with an institutional biography of industry-based scientific research in Pittsburgh. Both subjects sorely need historical attention. Condon is best remembered for battles over his security clearance during McCarthyism; lesser known are his scientific contributions, which helped power the golden age of American industrial research. Pittsburgh is a famed center of industrial production, but few appreciate the way science and technology blended in its industrial laboratories. Lassman rectifies this neglect, weaving together the story of Condon's career with the rise of industrial research in Pittsburgh, particularly at Westinghouse Electric, arguing that Condon's vision of a cooperative balance between academic and industrial interests was instrumental for Westinghouse's contributions to the most fruitful age of American industrial science. The focus on Condon perhaps occludes deeper discussion of the broader trends favoring that vision, but the book offers clean prose and engaging characters, making it an accessible and useful corrective to the previous historical focus on physicists at academic institutions.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above.

Krige (history, Georgia Tech) has assembled 13 essays that represent the state of the art in transnational history of science. The collection joins recent works (such as Audra Wolfe's Freedom's Laboratory, 2018) that seek to go beyond mere comparison of national contexts or simple de-emphasis of the nation-state in the name of transnational history. Instead, it seeks to develop a nuanced and sophisticated account of how geopolitical forces (including nation-states) shaped the production, transmission, and reception of scientific knowledge. The volume begins with a detailed analytical introduction that sets out the motivating methodological agenda and closes with a brief afterword that situates it in the current political moment. The essays in between--which are tightly edited, accessible, and largely well written--offer a broad picture of 20th-century science from the perspective of the intellectual ties that bound its scientific communities together. The book presumes some familiarity with major issues in the history of science and technology, but constitutes an invaluable, agenda-setting resource for anyone with an interest in these subjects.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty and professionals.

On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant's No. 4 reactor--located in the Ukrainian Republic of the USSR--exploded and propelled a massive amount of radioactive material into the atmosphere. What naturally happened next was a widespread nuclear fallout. Brown (MIT) has produced an exceptional study of that event, combining years of research in archives and numerous interviews with people ranging from scientists to bureaucrats to factory workers. Her research traces how various Soviet citizens managed, covered up, and lived (or not) with the consequences of a nuclear fallout that caused long-term damage to the environment and to the health of the surrounding populations. Particularly striking is the amount of information, analysis, and previously untold secrets Brown provides on this subject and her gripping, accessible approach. For example, Brown visits a wool factory in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv where workers had received significant doses of radioactivity even though the factory was located far from the Chernobyl blast. She then reveals that people became sick when radioactive sheep wool arrived in their city. Brown's narrative compellingly demonstrates the far-reaching and often unexpected consequences of the disaster.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

Generously illustrated with black-and-white photographs from the Denver Public Library, California State Railroad Museum, and Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, this volume investigates the American steam locomotive between 1895 and its demise in the 1950s. The longstanding trade journal published under various names--the Railroad Gazette (1856-1908), Railroad Age Gazette (1908-18), and Railway Age (1919-present)--provides a detailed framework for organizing the plethora of archival material available for these decades of the railroad industry. Compiled by a mining engineer, this volume combines technical detail with readability for a general audience. An initial section on the technical, political, and economic factors of the American railroad industry is followed by four chronological sections on locomotives (1895-1905, 1905-20, 1920-30, 1930-50). Each section examines locomotive engineering and construction, concluding with a brief mention of the alternative modes of traction that eventually superseded steam. Operating the gigantic, powerful, idiosyncratic steam locomotives required skill and elicited prideful attachment from those who did it. Meticulously documented, this work of both love and precision is an essential addition to transportation libraries and highly recommended for engineering and history of technology collections.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

Coming 115 years after the inaugural powered flight at Kitty Hawk, Hazelgrove's book offers the first major deconstruction of the myth that the Wright brothers played coequal roles in inventing the "flying machine." Concentrating on their personal lives, particularly the pre-December 1903 period of thought, trial, and error, the author examines the way in which these misanthropes--who were high-school dropouts, never strayed from home, and lived by their skill as bicycle mechanics--uncovered the secrets of powered flight. In the process, Hazelgrove reveals that Wilbur actually fully envisioned and designed the first Flyer. Orville's role, Hazelgrove contends, was less important--he largely assisted with mechanical details, emulating his brother's lead and making the epic initial takeoff. Thereafter, by outliving his sibling by 37 years, he was able to mold their biography, convincing the world that they were jointly responsible for the achievement. Well researched, documented, and controversial, this indexed work comes during a renewal of Wright interest that includes Lawrence Goldstone's Birdmen: The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies (CH, Oct'14, 52-0808) and David McCullough's The Wright Brothers (CH, Sep'15, 53-0219).