Nuclear Weapons: What You Need to Know

Robert E. Welsh
Citation: American Journal of Physics 76, 1175 (2008); doi: 10.1119/1.2978967
View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1119/1.2978967
View Table of Contents: http://scitation.aip.org/content/aapt/journal/ajp/76/12?ver=pdfcov
Published by the American Association of Physics Teachers
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BOOK REVIEWS
Hans C. von Baeyer, Editor
Department of Physics, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia 23187; hcvonb@wm.edu

Einstein and Oppenheimer: The Meaning of Genius.

Silvan S. Schweber. 432 pp. Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA, 2008. Price $29.95. ISBN
978-0-674-02828-9. Lewis Pyenson, Reviewer.
In contrast to the assertive, mechanistic Ren Descartes,
who did not dwell on history, reflective, retiring Blaise Pascal recognized the whimsy of the human past. He emphasized: But for a grain of sanda kidney stoneCromwell
might have ravaged Europe; had Cleopatras nose been
shorter had she been less assertive and plainer, Antiquity
would have taken another course. Contingencies of health
and passion do indeed explain events. Without taking account of them, lives hang indecisively in a world of fantasy.
That limbo of the imagination is the nemesis of intellectual history, the domain for Silvan Schwebers Einstein and
Oppenheimer. As an enterprise, intellectual history is at once
synchronic and diachronic. If the products of a mind are
worth discussing at length, it is because of their transcendent
value. The writings of Plato still speak to us directly, giving
us pleasure and profit, even if we know nothing at all about
the life of the author; we typically study them, for example
in secondary school, synchronically, extracted from time. We
also know that Plato tried to apply his political ideas, with
disastrous results. Responding to this observation, the intellectual historian then asks, in a diachronic vein, whether
Plato changed his mind about what he wrote; a connection is
sought between life and thought. To introduce intellectual
history in this way is to see the conundrum it poses for the
historian of science. The writings of Descartes and Pascal
still fire our imagination, but the same cannot be said about
the overwhelming majority of scientists past.
The historian makes sense of things mainly by comparison, which comes in many forms. Nevertheless, it is hard to
initiate a comparison of individuals who are unequal in talent
and impact. Einstein and Oppenheimer were not exactly
peers. To judge only from the pulse of the market, Einsteins
publications are perennially reissued, while Oppenheimers
are nearly a generation out of print. Einsteins relativity is
still newsworthy, while nearly all the books about Oppenheimer accessioned by Harvard College Library over the past
decade focus, as Silvan Schweber does, on politics and ethics, not science. Einstein is renowned for what he thought,
Oppenheimer for how he acted.
Einstein, the seminal theoretician of the first part of the
twentieth century, naturally invites comparison with Descartes, the pioneer of modern theory in the first part of the
seventeenth century. Einstein used tensor calculus for general
relativity; Descartes used analytical geometry for mechanics.
Both wrote about the Deity without dogma, and both saw
God as the author of natural law. From this point of view, an
indulgent historian might compare Oppenheimer, the moody
and inventive invalid who withdrew from physics to focus on
administration, with Pascal, the reflective prodigy, also an
invalid, who withdrew from natural knowledge to focus on
theology. Descartes and Pascal belonged to the same circles,
as did Einstein and Oppenheimer. In one significant affinity,
Einstein attended the cantonal school in Aarau and boarded
with the schools teacher of languages and history, Jost Win-

teler, through the intervention of Gustav Maier, a founder of

the Swiss Ethical Culture Society, while Oppenheimer attended the Ethical Culture School in New York.
Descartes and Einstein were old enough to have fathered
Pascal and Oppenheimer, and the juniors were not uncritical
of the sympathies of their elders. At the end of his life, Oppenheimer savaged Einsteins reputation pp. 279280 in a
lecture that, Leopold Infeld reported in his memoirs, Why I
Left Canada, was roundly condemned by Einsteins friends.
Einstein had little patience for historians, but Oppenheimer
respected the historians art, reorganizing the Institute for
Advanced Study at Princeton into exactly two schools: mathematical sciences and history.
Many scientists engage past circumstances, but historians
are the ones who do time. When historians query the past
and it is usually people who are their objectthey bring a
sense of significance, a critical interest, to the dense texture
they study. They mould what they find according to their
temperament, which can be transformed, if the enterprise is
carried out faithfully. This is the continuing fascination of the
discipline. A scientist may lose the flexibility of mind that
led, in youth, to new insight. But the historian improves with
age, for wisdom is the goal, not as among scientists a byproduct.
Historians engage posterity in a double sense. They interrogate people of the past while they prepare their own place
in it, shaping how they shall be seen by future generations.
Historians have this privilege and burden. To them alone is
permitted the backward glance. For scientists, however, the
light is still to come. The scientist may connect observations
about the past in serial fashion, each observation strung on a
wire, with the rhetorical force coming from the writers authority as a creator of ideas, rather than from his prose. A
scientist like Richard Feynman, cited in Einstein and Oppenheimer, can be contemptuous of scholars who write commentaries, that disease of the intellect p. 250. The historian, however, is a commentator given over to style, to the
choice of expression that evokes deeper meaning. For this
reason, a scientist may hope for a place in history by virtue
of having advanced perceptions that find general assent independent of the words used to formulate them. Einstein
repeated this admonition often, Leopold Infeld reports, as the
two physicists were writing the book known in English as
The Evolution of Physics. But the historian depends on the
special way his insights are displayed. For the scientist, the
general notion is everything; for the historian, banal generalities pale compared to the insight, patiently accumulated,
on each page of a text.
Mirroring the structure of Oppenheimers institute at
Princeton, the world of intellect has history and science as
two great attractors. Einstein and Oppenheimer bears the
clear trace of originating with a scientific sensibility, rather
than a historical one. It consists of six thematic essays. Four
are separate studies: Einstein and the bomb, Einstein and the
founding of Brandeis University, a recapitulation of Oppenheimers career, and Oppenheimer as an American Pragmatist. Two are explicitly comparative: Einstein and Oppenheimer on large questions in physics notably general relativity

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and quantum mechanics, and Einstein and Oppenheimer on

the nature of Gemeinschaft, or community, among physicists.
The essays share intimacies with the reader. We learn about
the impressionist paintings that hung in the New York apartment where young Oppenheimer grew up and about the dramatic physical disability of his mother; we learn about Einsteins anger, how he cut off contact with colleagues who
challenged his authority or judgment. But we do not get below the skin. We are left to imagine how serious personal
health problemsvariously tuberculosis and heart disease
affected Oppenheimers and Einsteins thought, and how
they reacted to the death of loved ones Einsteins son and
Oppenheimers lover Jean Tatlock. The matter goes beyond
prurient interest, for neither Einstein nor Oppenheimer was
shy about instructing lesser women and men in the art of
living right, and they did so in print.
By his silence, Silvan Schweber offers the judgment that
these prosaic matters are insignificant. In his view, spectacular achievements in science seem to be an innate mystery, in
their details owing little to material circumstance. Personal
experiences lead to general sensibilities that are difficult to
tie to particular writings. Two examples are revealing: Einsteins familiarity with anti-Semitism in Central Europe, and
Oppenheimers direct contact with Pragmatist philosophers
at Harvard University. Einstein was chagrined by the brushoff that Berlin Jews gave to their poorer, Eastern European
coreligionists around the time of the First World War, but no
connection is made here with Einsteins dissociation from
the Brandeis University project of rich and powerful American Jews. Renormalization in quantum electrodynamics, into
which Oppenheimer supported research discussed by David
Kaiser in his book, Drawing Theories Apart, was a pragmatic, ad hoc procedure for arriving at reasonable answers,
but no connection is made to Oppenheimers romance with
Pragmatism. Notwithstanding its large lists of names and
dates, Einstein and Oppenheimer takes for granted that Einsteins formulations in general relativity and Oppenheimers
work on gravitational singularities depended not at all on
affairs of the heart, hospital visits, annual income, or dietary
regime, on war and peace. We are led to conclude that, by
their decision to pursue pure science, Einstein and Oppenheimer sought to establish distance from the sublunary world.
From the land of contemplation in which they dwelled, they
scolded lower-level corruption.
A scholar or a scientist who has spent time in the slums or
the swamps, worrying about how to support a family and
trying to stay one step ahead of the sheriff, knows about hard
choices between a life devoted to higher things and just plain
scrambling for dough. Einstein did not scramble for long,
and Oppenheimer never had the experience. Silvan Schweber insists that Einstein, in the 1950s, was prepared to go to
jail, face economic ruin, and sacrifice his personal welfare in
the interests of the cultural welfare of his adopted country p.
91. The observation is both false and foolish. By expressing his opinions about civil disobedience, Einstein, the most
famous scientist in the world and a universal cultural icon,
risked nothing personally, and certainly not penury. The contrast with the mathematicians Chandler Davis, who served
time behind bars for Contempt of Congress, and Lee Lorch,
who risked his life in the cause of civil rights, is striking.
Because Einstein and Oppenheimer sat in such a lofty
perch, we use their words to justify one or another of our
own causes, but they acted as if the world owed them tribute.
It is a sensibility shared by Silvan Schweber, who writes:

Salvation for the individual scientist lies in pursing

his vocation fruitfully. His place is thus not in the
larger society but in the villagesin the communities of artists and scientists bound in freedom and
cooperation by the common bond of creativity. The
primary responsibility of the creative man is not
the well-being of the general society but the keeping of the gardens in his villagethe true
communityand to keep them flourishing in this
great open, windy world p. 186.
In our time, as in Voltaires, the cultivation of ones garden is
made possible by institutions and patrons. From this point of
view, the Institute for Advanced Study could be considered a
village in the sense of Marie Antoinettes much-maligned
Petit hameau de la Reine at Versailles, a carefully crafted,
intimate setting where refined intellects gratified their imagination. Even today, the French enviously refer to their scientist mandarins, ensconced in Parisian elegance, as paysans
du cinquime (arrondissement)peasants of the elite fifth
ward.
Finishing Einstein and Oppenheimer, we are no closer to
understanding the meaning of genius than at the start. The
endnotes do not help sort out the few original insights from
the many derivative and superficial ones. Much is made of
the way Einstein holds his left hand in what appears to be a
Buddhist sign for compassionate teaching p. 288, but a
photograph on p. 47 shows him grasping a pipe in this way.
The prose is tiresome, especially when archival material is
introduced for example, pp. 16970, about atomic-energy
legislation, with a two-page endnote. In a long treatment of
the mature Oppenheimers Pragmatism, there is the contention, paradoxical to my eyes, that Oppenheimer respected the
distinct integrity of particular scientific disciplines while believing that science was strictly cumulative pp. 227, 235.
All manner of digressive, personal information is presented
for example, a one-sentence aside to Einsteins sexual appetite at Princeton p. 268 without making a connection to
ideas. Here, especially, is where we ask for art.
We nevertheless retain an appreciation that the mature
Einstein and Oppenheimer each focused on large themes.
Einstein wrestled with a unified field theory, addressed matters of ethics and politics, and lent his name to institutions
and causes. Oppenheimer vigorously promoted quantum
electrodynamics and also wrote on ethics and politics. Einstein, a consistent loner or Einspnner p. 268, was an ornament of the institution directed by Oppenheimer. Their relation to political authority differed substantially, however.
Einstein paid little attention beyond amused irony to the
controversy over his renunciation of German citizenship during his tenure as an academician, professor, and institute director in Berlin. Stripped of security clearance in the early
1950s for communist sympathies, however, Oppenheimer
felt embarrassment, perhaps inadequacy, when he could have
projected pride. Indeed, one might have imagined Oppenheimer at the head of a national movement in favor of freedom
of conscience and civil liberty, the very notions he defended
in his writings from this time. Einstein played such a role
when he advocated civil disobedience as a response to military conscription.

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Civilization, historian Arnold Toynbee wrote, exhibits cyclical change. Hemlines rise and fall, too, with the stock
market. A decade later, Oppenheimer was once more a
trusted advisor of the American government. There is a poignant photograph, not reproduced here, of Oppenheimer receiving the Enrico Fermi Award of the Atomic Energy Commission from the hand of President Lyndon B. Johnson on
December 2, 1963. One week earlier, Johnson had promised
Henry Cabot Lodge, a political adversary who was then ambassador to South Vietnam, significant military support for
the loathsome regime there in its war against communist
insurgents.
Few are the instances when potentates enfranchise scholars and scientists. Even when rulers have personal sympathy
for higher learningfor example, Napoleon or de Valera
their support is seldom without contradiction and controversy. As John Heilbron observes about Werner Heisenberg
in his book, The Dilemmas of an Upright Man, scientists
would do well to be skeptical about promises made by
princes. This dictum came to Einstein early in life, and to
Oppenheimer too late. Einstein knew that operating in the
inconstant and unreliable world of human affairs calls for
adaptability. It was okay for him, as a pacifist, to take money
from the imperial German army, just as it was okay for him
to advocate the destruction of the Third Reich. But Oppenheimer, who navigated the currents of worldly compromise
on the strength of patrician upbringing, felt wounded by an
inevitable rejection of his pretensions as a councilor of state.
Authority of the sort these giants wielded rarely comes without conditions. Einstein and Oppenheimer offers cautionary
tales about theoretical physicists seeking to have influence
by offering advice.
Lewis Pyenson is the Dean of the Graduate College of Western Michigan University. His books include The Young Einstein: The Advent of Relativity, The Art of Teaching Physics, coedited with Jean-Franois Gauvin, and Servants of
Nature: A History of Scientific Institutions, Enterprises, and
Sensibilities, which he wrote with Susan Sheets-Pyenson.
His latest book is The Passion of George Sarton: A Modern
Marriage and Its Discipline.
Energy, Environment, and Climate. Richard Wolfson. 532
pp. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 2008.
Price: $67.50 paper ISBN 978-0-393-92763-4. Art
Hobson, Reviewer.
Courses in energy and the environment are now offered by
many U.S. secondary schools and colleges. Wolfsons textbook for such a course is the fourth that I know of that is
aimed at college non-science students.1 All of these textbooks are conceptual, meaning that they use little or no
algebra even though they are strongly quantitative in their
use of numbers, proportionalities, graphs, powers of ten, percentages, and probabilities. They all begin with a brief presentation of the physics that will be needed for the remainder
of the book, presentations that are too brief to allow the book
to qualify as a physics textbook but that are usually sufficient to provide the background needed for a textbook limited to energy-related topics. Wolfsons book uses somewhat
more algebra than the other books, to the point that many
nonscience students may be distracted and put off by it.

Wolfson also differs from the other authors in offering a

slightly more substantial serving of physics in the opening
chapters. This is good. However, I must quibble with the way
he defines the central concept of energy. Wolfsons strategy p. 22 is to ask students to do deep knee bends for a few
minutes, at a rate of one knee bend per second, and to then
inform them that your body is working at the rate of about
100 watts. This gives students an intuitive, yet quantitative,
feel for the watt, and power. He then p. 37 describes energy as the stuff that makes everything happen, and
quantifies this notion with the statement p. 50 that if you
use energy at the rate of one watt for one second, youve
used one joule of energy. This seems an unnecessarily
roundabout way to define energy. The other three books, after defining work as the exertion of a force through a distance, just come right out and say that energy is the capacity
to do work. This is the correct, complete, and most easily
understood definition of this important word.
Quibbles aside, this is a very good book. What I like best
about it is its emphasis on global warming Wolfson prefers
the term climate change, but Ive always preferred global
warming as equally accurate scientifically, and more direct.
A textbook needs one or more unifying themes, and global
warmingwhich might well turn out to be the overarching
theme of this centuryis perfect for a book on energy and
the environment. This theme is introduced at the beginning
of the book, reappears at several points, and fully occupies
the last five of the books 16 chapters.
One of many nice details in these five chapters is a quantitative comparison of the greenhouse effect on Venus, Earth,
and Mars. Wolfson uses the Stefan-Boltzmann radiation law
and the known rate at which solar energy reaches these planets to calculate average temperatures at the three planets
surfaces, neglecting the greenhouse effect. He then notes that
the observed surface temperatures exceed the calculated temperatures by 503 C, 33 C, and 0 C, respectively. This
excess is the greenhouse effect, and the three values accord
nicely with the observed facts that Venus has a thick atmosphere heavily laden with the greenhouse gases H2O and
CO2, Earths atmosphere has a more modest amount of these
two greenhouse gases, while Mars has very little atmosphere
and even less greenhouse gas. These values also show students that a planets atmosphere, and its greenhouse gases in
particular, have a major influence on climate.
Wolfson gives a good presentation of the workings and
results of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
IPCC. Among those results are estimated values of the
natural and anthropogenic forcings, or changes in the
amount of solar energy reaching Earths surface, measured in
W / m2; major sources of global CO2 emissions; the global
warming potential of the various greenhouse gases, relative
to CO2; the carbon cycle; feedback mechanisms that can
dampen or amplify the forcings; Earths temperature during
recent times and over hundreds of thousands of years;
nuclear isotopic methods of reconstructing the long-term
CO2 concentration and temperature records; the evidence

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that humans are at least partly to blame for the recent temperature rise; and much more. His presentation of the various
IPCC scenarios and future projections based on them is especially enlightening.
The final section of the final chapter, titled Strategy for a
Sustainable Future, is a welcome and heartening presentation of the Socolow-Pacala wedge strategy describing
some 15 different ways to combat global warming, all of
them based on plausible near-term technology such as carbon
capture and storage.2
The books central block of seven chapters covers the various energy resources: fossil two chapters, nuclear, geothermal and tidal, direct solar, indirect solar water, wind, biomass, and a chapter on hydrogen in both of its senses:
nuclear fusion, and the hydrogen economy based on the
chemistry of hydrogen. These chapters are uniformly well
done; they could have benefited from a careful definition of,
and greater use of, the all-important concept of sustainability. At the end of the book, Chap. 16 includes an excellent
discussion of energy efficiency and conservation, but I think
this big topic deserves to be treated as a separate chapter.
The pedagogy is quite adequate. The writing is relaxed,
personable, and good. The details are correct, insofar as I
was able to check them. The text fails to emphasize inquiry methods, although as in any textbook the end-ofchapter questions could be considered inquiry. Each chapter
includes a review of the big ideas, terms students need to
know, about ten review questions, about 15 quantitative but
nonalgebraic exercises, and about four research problems
that involve library or internet research and, frequently, numerical calculations or estimations.
Any textbook worth its salt should teach something new to
the course instructor, and to reviewers. Indeed, I learned several things, such as the distinction between series and parallel hybrid vehicles p. 120, the meaning of a combined
cycle power plant p. 124, a gravitational analogy to
nuclear fusion p. 345, and the comparison of Venus, Earth,
and Mars referred to above.
Its an excellent, carefully written, and highly relevant
textbook, with a welcome emphasis on global warminga
topic that should in my opinion be part of every introductory
physics course.
1

The other three are Gordon J. Aubrecht, Energy: Physical, Environmental

and Social Impact, 3rd ed. Pearson Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River,
NJ, 2006; Roger Hinrichs and Merlin Kleinbach, Energy: Its Use and the
Environment, 4th ed. Thomson Brooks/Cole, Belmont, CA, 2006;
Robert A. Ristinen and Jack J. Kraushaar, Energy and the Environment,
2nd ed. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 2006.
2
Robert H. Socolow and Stephen W. Pacala, A plan to keep carbon in
check, Sci. Am., Sept. 2006, pp. 5057.

Art Hobson, Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University

of Arkansas, Fayetteville, is the author of Physics: Concepts
& Connections, 4th ed. (Pearson Prentice Hall Inc., 2007), a
conceptual physics textbook for non-science college students
that incorporates the societal implications of physics and
emphasizes modern physics. In 2006, he received the American Association of Physics Teachers Millikan Award.

Nuclear Weapons: What You Need to Know. Jeremy

Bernstein. 299 pp. Cambridge U.P., New York, 2008.
Price: $27.00 cloth. ISBN 978-0-521-88408-2. Robert
E. Welsh, Reviewer.
In this age of terrorism, city government cannot be entirely separated from nuclear weapons, and now we all have
an interest and a need to know. Those words of Stanley
Kubrick, famous for his movie Doctor Strangelove, cap
the final chapter of Jeremy Bernsteins recent book. Bernstein, author of several well-received books, important research publications and an impressive collection of articles
in the New Yorker magazine, has written a most interesting
treatise on nuclear weapons. That last chapter, titled Proliferation, struck me as the most important part of the book.
The book opens in the 19th century with mention of
Heinrich Geissler, a famous glassblower and inventor of the
discharge tube that bears his name. It quickly moves to a
discussion of J. J. Thompsons measurement of e/m of the
electron. Ernest Rutherford, Albert Einstein, Hans Geiger,
and Ernest Marsden round out a short first chapter. Those
details convey the flavor of the opening chapters with their
historical trip through the atomic and nuclear physics of the
late 19th and much of the 20th century. The discoveries of
fission and of the released free neutrons, with their potential
for a chain reaction, are related in detail. The story of Fermis famous pile under Stagg Field at the University of
Chicago is probably familiar to many. Less well-known may
be theorist Robert Serbers role in the development of implosion weapons tested at Alamogordo in July, 1945 and
dropped on Nagasaki weeks later. In contrast, as Bernstein
points out, the gun-type weapon was employed untested at
Hiroshima. The description of the problems posed by plutonium 240 and its potential to cause bomb preignition is especially informative. Did you know that between room temperature and its melting point plutonium has at least five
allotropic phases of substantially differing density? If you
find that point interesting I did, especially in view of its
implications for the critical mass of a sphere of plutonium,
this book should please you. British-born metallurgist Cyril
Smith helped solve the problem of stabilizing the delta-phase
plutonium by alloying it. Bernstein describes how an intuitive feeling led Smith to the gallium alloy which stabilized
the plutonium while allowing it to revert to the denser alpha
phase when compressed in an implosion device. For most
readers, such specifics of physics and technology will be
captivating. For some laymen, I suspect, they may prove a
bit daunting. Having held a very warm sphere of plutonium
in my hand, I was a bit chagrined to be learning about those
metallic phases more than 50 years later.
Such detail is characteristic of the many interesting historical points that are vividly described in this book. The fact
that the author knew a number of the key players in the
development and early testing of the atomic bomb lends authenticity to his story. As a physicist, he does a good job of
introducing the elementary atomic and nuclear principles underlying nuclear fission and fusion.
But for whom did the author write this book? For physicists? For current or former nuclear weapons people? I sus-

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pect not. For military historians with an unusual grasp of or

interest in basic physics? For the educated layman? That
reader will need to be willing to grapple with many unfamiliar details to obtain full enjoyment of this book. I conclude
that Bernstein, an author of recognized skill, wrote this book
mainly for his own enjoyment and to set the record
straight. Good reasons, to be sure, but likely to reduce the
number of readers for a subject that is almost certainly one of
the most important facing mankind today.
If you are reading this review, then it is quite likely that
the complete title, Nuclear Weapons: What You Need to
Know, applies to you. I would prefer that this excellent
author had written his very interesting book for a wider audience. In particular, I wish he had given more space to the
topic of nuclear weapons proliferation, one of the gravest
threats to the world.
My suggestion for Dr. Bernsteins next book would be a

laymans detailed guide to the problems we face with more

than 10 000 readily deployed nuclear explosive devices scattered throughout the world in locations of varying degrees of
security. The problems inherent in an expanded use of
nuclear power generation could be more forcefully explained
to those who see nuclear as the principal solution to the
energy crisis. In short, the subject of Bernsteins excellent
final chapter seems to deserve far wider dissemination than
this book will bring. I liked the book. It concerns me that the
many who could benefit most from it will never read or
finish it.

Robert E. Welsh is Chancellor Professor of Physics, Emeritus at the College of William and Mary. His research is in
experimental elementary particle properties and in nuclear
medical imaging. He served in the US Air Force as a
Nuclear Weapons Officer.

BOOKS RECEIVED
Advanced Excel For Scientific Data Analysis second edition. Robert de
Levie. 707 pp. Oxford U. P., New York, 2008. Price: $59.50 paper
ISBN 978-0-19-537022-5.
Electrical Transport in Nanoscale Systems. Massimiliano Di Ventra. 476
pp. Cambridge U. P., New York, 2008. Price: $80.00 ISBN 978-0-52189634-4.
Exterior Ballistics With Applications: Skydiving, Parachute Fall, Flying
Fragments. Gjergj Klimi. 597 pp. Xlibris Corporation, Philadelphia,
PA, 2008. Price: $23.99 paper ISBN 978-1-4363-2359-8.
Geometrical and Trigonometric Optics. Eustace L. Dereniak and Teresa
D. Dereniak. 409 pp. Cambridge U. P., New York, 2008. Price $80.00
ISBN 978-0-521-88746-5.
Ionic Transport Processes: In Electrochemistry and Membrane Science.

Kysti Kontturi, Lasse Murtomki and Jos A. Manzanares. Oxford U.

P., New York, 2008. Price: $110.00 ISBN 978-0-19-953381-7.
Photonic Crystals: Molding the Flow of Light second revised edition.
John D. Joannopoulos, Steven G. Johnson, Joshua N. Winn and Robert
D. Meade. 286 pp. Princeton U. P., 2008. Price: $75.00 ISBN 978-0691-12456-8.
Relativistic Figures of Equilibrium. Reinhard Meinel, Marcus Ansorg, Andreas Kleinwchter, Gernot Neugebauer, and David Petroff. 218 pp.
Cambridge U. P., New York, 2008. Price: $140.00 ISBN 978-0-52186383-4.
Ultraviolet and X-ray Spectroscopy of the Solar Atmosphere. Kennet J.
H. Philios, Uri Feldman, and Enrico Landi. 349 pp. Cambridge U. P.,
New York, 2008. Price $170.00 ISBN 978-0-521-84160-3.

INDEX TO ADVERTISERS
Physics Academic Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cover 2
WebAssignClassroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1081
AAPT Meetings career fair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1083
AAPT Publications e-NNOUNCER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1083
AAPT Programs Phys. Team . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1084

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Am. J. Phys., Vol. 76, No. 12, December 2008
Book Reviews
1176
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