Science2012 N w B oks n Harvard University Press TO FORGIVE ENGINEERING ANIMALS DESIGN How Life Works Understanding Failure MARK DENNY AND ALAN MCFADZEAN HENRY PETROSKI A Physics World Book of the Year “[An] authoritative text “From soaring albatrosses to croaking bull- about the interrelationship frogs, different creatures exploit various aspects between success and fail- of engineering to help them fly, hunt, or com- ure in the engineering en- municate. In a clear and well-illustrated ac- terprise…Petroski’s most count, former aerospace engineers Mark gripping passages are his Denny and Alan McFadzean describe the prin- Sherlockian dissections of ciples of physics that underlie animals’ sense of engineering fiascos and smell, their use of sonar, and how they flock, the importance of learning signal to each other, and consume energy.” from the vast archive of —Nature forensic analyses.” “A remark- —Kirkus Reviews able book… “Though his focus here is primarily on Written in a bridges, Petroski extends his analysis to in- light and en- clude the sinking of the Titanic, the mid- gaging style, flight explosion of TWA Flight 800, the but with Challenger tragedy, the Y2K computer pro- plenty of ref- gramming crisis, and the Deepwater Horizon erences and spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Each has its own footnotes, En- unique set of human, mechanical, and engi- gineering Ani- neering failures, and Petroski does a terrific mals is perfect job of identifying and communicating not for physicists only what went wrong, but what was learned who, like your from the failure and how that knowledge has reviewer, since been put into practice. Fellow engineers abandoned and armchair scientists will get the most out formal studies of the book, but even the layman will find in biology at Petroski’s study to be accessible, informative, an early age and have always wondered what and interesting.” they missed.” —Publishers Weekly —Physics World Belknap 2012 12 halftones 432 pp. “Mark Denny and Alan McFadzean’s Engi- Cloth $27.95 / £19.95 ISBN 978-0-674-06584-0 neering Animals provides a generally engaging engineer’s perspective on how animals are built and how they function…The authors do a nice job of making how animals work an en- ticing subject.” —ANDREW A. BIEWENER, Science Belknap 2011; 100 line illus., 18 halftones 400 pp. Cloth $35.00 / £25.95 ISBN 978-0-674-04854-6 CONTENTS PHYSICS AND ENGINEERING .............................................2 NATURAL SCIENCE................................................................6 EVOLUTION ............................................................................8 DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY.............................................10 STEPHEN JAY GOULD .........................................................11 NEUROSCIENCE...................................................................12 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE .............................................13 MEDICINE .............................................................................14 EVOCRITICISM.....................................................................15 SCIENCE FOR ALL AGES .....................................................16 SCIENCE AND SOCIETY......................................................17 INDEX.....................................................................................18 ORDER FORM .......................................................................19 P H y S i c S & engineering www.hup.harvard.edu / 1-800-405-1619 (in U.S. only) GALILEO’S MUSE Renaissance Mathematics and the Arts MARK A. PETERSON “As Peterson sees it, Galileo has more in common with today’s quantum theorists, whose work requires mad leaps of logic, than he does with the generations of by-the-numbers physicists he in- spired. The world’s first true scientist, the professor tells us, un- derstood that it takes a man of reason to provide the proof, but only a fantasist can truly reimagine the universe.” —Boston Globe, Brainiac blog “Peterson’s scientific background makes him well equipped to identify and elucidate mathematical ideas present in works which are often considered in purely artistic terms…I found the book very thought-provoking; it gave me a new appreciation of how the Renaissance was not simply a ‘flowering’ of cultural activity, but represented a significant step-change in modes of thought. Overall, I would thoroughly recommend this lively and stimu- lating book to anyone interested in the history of ideas.” —SOPHIE HUCZYNSKA, LONDON MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY 2011 22 line illus., 2 halftones 352 pp. Cloth $28.95 / £21.95 ISBN 978-0-674-05972-6 NUCLEAR FORCES The Making of the Physicist Hans Bethe SILVAN S. SCHWEBER “[Bethe was] the supreme problem solver of the twentieth century.” —FREEMAN DYSON What drove Nobel-winning physicist Hans Bethe, head of Theoretical Physics at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project, to later renounce the weaponry he had worked so tirelessly to create? That is one of the questions answered by Nuclear Forces, a riveting biography of Bethe’s early life and development as both a scien- tist and a man of principle. 2012 21 halftones 608 pp. Cloth $35.00 / £25.95 ISBN 978-0-674-06587-1 A SHORT HISTORY OF PHYSICSINTHE AMERICAN CENTURY DAVID C. CASSIDY “David Cassidy tells a big story in a short book written for anyone interested in the place of science in American society. American physics began to stir at the end of the 19th century and rose to world hegemony by the beginning of World War II. The creation of the atomic bomb, the Cold War, and the consequent lavish support for physics meant that American dominance endured until the last decades of the 20th century. Cassidy stresses the perennial opposition be- tween pure and applied physics, the gigantizing of science dependent on the federal purse, the transition from powerful science administrators to functionar- ies, globalization, and the relative marginalization of women. His conclusion on the rise of solid-state physics, computing, and the Internet brings this dramatic story to a dramatic close.” —J. L. HEILBRON, AUTHOR OF Galileo “Cassidy tells this essential story with brevity and style, filling a major gap in modern historiography.” —SPENCER WEART, AIP CENTER FOR HISTORY OF PHYSICS New Histories of Science, Technology, and Medicine 2011 6 tables 224 pp. Cloth $29.95 / £22.95 ISBN 978-0-674-04936-9 P H y S i c S & engineering 3 new new paperback paperback THE RISEOF NUCLEAR FEAR DUEL AT SPENCER R. WEART DAWN “This is a wonderful book, which I can’t wait Heroes, Martyrs, to assign to my students. It’s not a conven- and the Rise of tional history of the nuclear age, but some- Modern thing much more unusual and creative—an Mathematics exploration of the images and emotions that nuclear weapons and power generation have AMIR ALEXANDER inspired, from the dropping of the Bomb up to the recent crisis at the Fukushima reactor in “Through the Japan. The interplay of emotion and reason in life stories of the atomic debate of the past 100 years is han- three of the pe- dled with great sensitivity but also incisive crit- riod’s most con- icism. Neither side in that debate escapes troversial figures, Evariste Galois, Niels Henrik Weart’s penetrating rebuttal of their wilder Abel and Janos Bolyai, Alexander reveals how claims.” their transgressive work changed mathematics —GERARD DE GROOT, AUTHOR OF and led to their lionization as Romantic he- The Bomb: A Life roes…Duel at Dawn neither talks over the head of its readers nor condescends, but in- 2012 384 pp. Paper $21.95 / £16.95 stead ensures that the work of these Romantic ISBN 978-0-674-05233-8 mathematicians is not cloaked in obscurity. Of LAKE VIEWS particular note is his breakdown of Hungarian This World and the Universe mathematician Janos Bolyai’s discovery of STEVEN WEINBERG non-Euclidian geometry. Steven Weinberg is Winner of the Alexander does not shy Nobel Prize in Physics away from the intricacies A Physics World Top Ten Book of of the theory, nor the the Year drawn out, convoluted history that underlies it. “It would be putting it mildly to He takes readers through say that Weinberg triumphantly the process step by step, lives up to what it says on the using plain language and Nobel tin: a true intellectual as clear diagrams to chart a well as a brilliant theoretical course through the un- physicist.” known…Mathematics —RICHARD DAWKINS need not be a scary, “This collection of essays proves daunting subject, and once again that Weinberg is more Alexander does much to than just a top-tier physicist. He is prove it.” also one of the few scientists brave —MICHAEL PATRICK enough—and knowledgeable BRADY, Forbes.com enough—to successfully take on “Duel at Dawn suggests the role of public intellectual.” how preconceptions —DAN FALK, New Scientist about the trappings of “Steven Weinberg is famous as a genius have radiated scientist, but he thinks deeply and from art to maths. But its writes elegantly about many other greater value lies in peel- things besides science. This collec- ing back the layers of ha- tion of his writings is concerned giography from figures with history, politics, and science such as Galois to reveal in roughly equal measure.” gloriously complicated —FREEMAN DYSON, men.” New York Review of Books —JASCHA HOFFMAN, Nature Belknap 2011; 2010 272 pp. New Histories of Science, Technology, and Medicine Cloth $25.95 / £19.95 ISBN 978-0-674-03515-7 2011; 2010 10 halftones, 14 line illus. 320 pp. Paper $18.95 / £14.95 ISBN 978-0-674-06230-6 Cloth $28.95 / £21.95 ISBN 978-0-674-04661-0 Paper $18.95 / £14.95 ISBN 978-0-674-06174-3 4 P H y S i c S & engineering www.hup.harvard.edu / 1-800-405-1619 (in U.S. only) RISING new paperback FORCE THE FRUIT, THE TREE, ANDTHE The Magic of Magnetic SERPENT Levitation Why We See So Well JAMES D. LYNNE A. ISBELL LIVINGSTON A Choice Outstanding A Physics Academic Title World Book of the Year The Atlantic Books of the Year, Runner-up “Giving a new meaning “Isbell weaves together facts to literary from anthropology, neuro- suspense, science, palaeontology, and physicist James Livingston devotes his book to psychology to explain that the science of magnetic levitation.