Customer Reviews
Some Like It Hot - By: GmgB, 28 Aug 2007 
In the second chapter of "The Universe In A Nutshell" Stephen Hawking quotes nineteenth-century author Charles Lamb: "Nothing puzzles me like time & space. And yet nothing troubles me less than time & space, because I never think of them". Everyday we look at the thermometer & we are aware that "caldo" is not "cold". Yet do we understand heat better than gravity? This book presents the fondamental concepts of heat, entropy & energy. It is a complete history, a long chain of famous scientists & discoveries, up to the recent results of extended thermodynamics. Full of anecdotes, beautifully written by a major contributor to the field it also contains the long mathematical developments of the theory. Remember: "It's not how long it takes it's who's taking you".
A valuable addition to a nonextant literature - By: Ellen Gibson-pelkowski, 23 Feb 2007 I have been waiting patiently for this kind of historical account, particularly from the pen of one who has witnessed & participatedin its recent shaping. Indeed, here is a book on the history of thermodynamics by one of its modern creators. It is, as such, an invaluable contribution to a fieldin bad need of a reliable history or, for that matter, a history at all.
This book makes for excellent reading on the topic it covers, even if the author had to be (too) selectivein presenting the most recent successes & trends. A casein point is the presentation of radiative entropy sources of the climate system,in which the author consistently ignores any attempts previous to the workin 1996 of one of his collaborators, which one hardly expectsin a book on (even only) "a" history of thermodynamics! Equally irritating is an occasional lack of care for historical detail (according to Muller, Prigogine, whose work is nowhere summarized, has not died yet).
As a lover of good books, I may be allowed to say something about its outward qualities. The hardcover book is printed on good paper, has an overall good layout, with a somewhat faint typography of the equations, seemingly unavoidablein our "LateX" age, & it has the inner book glued, not sewn, to the back, which is very annoyingin a book that is to survive the ravages of its foreseeable wear during many years. I earnestly fear that my copy will fall apartin some weeks hence, for I see myself rereading it often. With the pricein mind, Springer is not to be congratulated for the binding quality.
There is another aspect that I personally found somewhat slightly disturbing, for which the publisher is only partly to be blamed. (The publisher's influence is not nugatory, as it seems to have foiled a far more interesting title for the book!). I mean the style, which is partly sober & on the other hand liberally personal, too informal at times, bordering on a slang that not everyone will enjoy ("belly-aching about" is an expression I would not expectin such a work!). There are a few clumsy phrases, some downright grammatical errors, many a slip of the keyboard, & too many colloquialisms, which we may excusein a German author who wants to impress (his German colleagues) with his English language skills.
Allin all, the book is commendable. It is not intended for readers without mathematical literacy, but that is what makes it most valuable for the scientist herself. It will be greeted as the first book of its kind & it does fill a longtime gapin the history of thermodynamics.
