Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2017 -

Following The Microscope and the Eye (CH, Dec'08, 46-2050), Schickore (history and philosophy of science and medicine, Indiana Univ.) presents her second monograph, a lively and stylish contribution to the history and philosophy of experiment. Along similar lines, recent efforts such as Steinle's Exploratory Experiments (CH, Nov'16, 54-1161) and Franklin's What Makes a Good Experiment? (CH, Dec'16, 54-1683) reflect the dynamism of this research area. The book under review traces over 300 years of experiments with snake venom. In addition to examining how scientists conducted experiments, Schickore parses how these individuals communicated their procedures to other researchers--a pivotal but often overlooked element of scientific life. The focus on the rhetoric of experimental method permits a series of clear and incisive comments on how the scientific community--as it grew into a profession--established, enforced, and renegotiated its standards for experimental practice. Schickore serves up lucid prose while nimbly balancing several layers of argument. Although it will be most valuable to those with some field-specific preparation, the book serves as an effective tool for introducing graduate students or advanced undergraduates to major issues in the field, as well as for motivating expansions and responses from practicing researchers.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; faculty and professionals.

Maher (history, New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers Univ.) contrasts the culture of the 1960-70s NASA leadership and its focus on the space race with counterculture leaders' focus on the issues of poverty, housing, war, nature and environment, and sexism and feminism. Maher adroitly includes many concurrent editorial cartoons and examples of cultural clashes--astronauts James Lovell's and John Swigert's walk out in 1970 from the Broadway production of Hair, and astronaut and scientist Sally Ride's postmission refusal of a bouquet of flowers presented to her by NASA. Maher's thesis is that while politicians such as President Nixon used western frontier and colonial imagery to appeal to social conservatives and the "New Right," NASA's release of the "Whole Earth" photograph and its technological (often covert) support of military operations in South Vietnam inflamed many to protest against NASA and to encourage the organization to focus on issues at home (i.e., cooperative projects with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the sharing of satellite technology and imagery for nations to survey their environmental conditions). This excellent work is strongly recommended for all readers and all libraries with history of technology and environmental history collections.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

This wide-ranging and thought-provoking collection of essays from leading historians and philosophers of science focuses on how culture informs the study of the history of science. Each author uses a particular episode, event, or topic in the history of science to unpack what culture signifies and what it does not (and should not) represent. The essays warn of the dangers of viewing history through the lens of culturalism, essentialism, or universality, while seeking a critical understanding of the ways in which culture influences and is influenced by scientific practice. This is accomplished through an analysis of diverse topics, including the treatment of quadratic equations in ancient China, the development of an African AIDS vaccine, and the study of physics in 20th-century Japan, among many others. Although intended for an audience of historians and philosophers of science, as well as social and cultural historians, the book will also be a valuable resource for science studies, anthropology, feminist studies, and a host of other academic specialties concerned with epistemology or historiography.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; researchers and faculty.

The history of museums is generating significant new and important scholarship that explores what constitutes a museum. This diverse set of essays, part of this new scholarship, focuses on the change in scientifically focused museums in the 19th-century United States and Great Britain, and the role that expertise had in defining these changes. The volume's essays are derived from a 2015 conference that explored "the purpose of museums" and the individuals these institutions serve. In this volume, editors Lightman (humanities, York Univ., Canada) and Berkowitz, director of the Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, combine the work of many leading museum scholars and practitioners. The ten essays are separated into five broad topics in which the editors demonstrate the many "cultures of display" in the 19th century. As a result, this important book demonstrates the variety of means in which people engaged with scientific knowledge in the public sphere and complicates the idea of what constituted 19th-century scientific knowledge. Thus, this work offers scholars novel and important ways to contemplate the role of science and museums when they explore social, political, and cultural history.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; faculty and professionals.

Raynaud (science historian, Univ. of Grenoble Alpes, France) systematically examines themes connected to optics, linear perspective, and the theory of binocular vision, especially as these pertain to Renaissance art. The author carefully measures, calculates, and analyzes numerous paintings to determine what, if any, mathematical tools of perspective were actually employed by the artists. In many cases, the author's results bring into question long-held assumptions that certain Renaissance artists developed the mathematical tools of perspective. Raynaud flatly asserts that Brunelleschi's "... role in the development of perspective is in fact quite obscure" and that "... it is necessary to draw a more nuanced picture of the contribution of Alberti to the development of linear perspective." The author writes that Masaccio's famous "... Trinity fresco does not follow the rules of linear perspective." Raynaud also argues that, contrary to many accounts by historians of science, there is no evidence to connect the theory of binocular vision to bifocal perspective in Renaissance art. The book makes an important contribution to the scholarship of Renaissance optics.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals.

The Age of Electroacoustics is an excellent addition to the literature on the history of acoustics, particularly electroacoustics. The book thoroughly describes the influence of the world wars on the science of acoustics. The work's six chapters include an introduction and overview of acoustics, the impact of World War I, the transformation of acoustics, the development of acoustics in the Weimar Republic (i.e., the importance of technical acoustics for the development of radio broadcasting, sound motion pictures, sound recording, and amplification systems in the 1920s and 1930s), the National Socialist rise to power in 1933 and its profound impact on the acoustics research community, and an examination of the new acoustics created during the first decades of the 20th century. The concluding chapter describes how the history of technical acoustics and electroacoustics fits into the existing historiography of physics in the interwar period, and also the apparent dichotomy between science and engineering. The figures are very clear. The detailed notes provided for each chapter are extremely helpful, and there is an exhaustive list of references. Overall, highly recommended for all interested in the history of science--specifically the science and engineering of acoustics.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; faculty and professionals.