The year in reviews: Five books that stood out in 2014

One feature of the Physics Today Book Reviews section is its technical and topical diversity. Our content ranges from popularizations to advanced textbooks, from acoustics to statistical physics and thermodynamics.

Highlighting that diversity was one goal of this year’s “top five” list. The five books listed below that stood out cover quite distinguishable topics: cosmology and relativity; nuclear physics; oceanography and geophysics; quantum theory; and space science and “science-fiction” physics. Other qualifications for the list were that the subject matter was intriguing and of relatively broad appeal, that the review was thorough and critical, and that the book was endorsed by the expert who reviewed it.

Clearly, these aren’t necessarily the best physics books of the year; I don’t even know where to start making such a list. But if you’re looking for expert opinions on relatively accessible titles, you’ll find them in the review summaries below. When you’re done reading them, share in the comments section your own top five list of nonfiction science books. And you don’t need to limit yourself to books reviewed by Physics Today or published in 2014.

Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn: A Father, a Daughter, the Meaning of Nothing, and the Beginning of Everything by Amanda Gefter (Bantam Books, 2014; $28.00). Anyone in the business of reviewing and cataloging science books as I am will agree that few things are more predictable than seeing Albert Einstein’s name in the title of a new tome; a rough search of Google Books returns more than 300 such books that were published in 2014. Science journalist Amanda Gefter’s book is among them; as is Einstein and the Quantum, discussed later.

Gefter’s text stands out as one that “tackles weighty concepts in physics and philosophy…[with] enough charm and personality” to pull it off, writes book reviewer Chad Orzel, a physics professor at Union College in New York. The book’s backstory is also intriguing: Gefter basically pulls a fast one to obtain press credentials so that she and her father, who together were on a quest to understand the origin of the universe, can attend a symposium honoring John Wheeler at Princeton University. The symposium “changed my life,” she said in a Bookends Q&A with Physics Today. “After the conference let out, my father and I walked to Einstein’s former home, now a private residence, and as we stood on his lawn we realized that this thing that had begun as a private hobby had become something bigger.”

Along the way, Gefter engages with notable physicists like David Gross, Leonard Susskind, and Wheeler himself. According to Orzel, she provides engaging and detailed descriptions of such topics as quantum measurement, inflationary cosmology, the philosophy of structural realism, Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, Hawking radiation, string theory, and field theory’s anti–de Sitter/conformal field theory duality. “Dozens of other popular authors have written about black holes and string theory, but Gefter’s excitement makes even such overdone subjects seem fresh,” he writes.

The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era by Craig Nelson (Scribner, 2014; $29.99).

Why didn’t freelance writer Craig Nelson go with The Age of Radiation for the book title? As he shared in his Q&A with Physics Today , the word radiation “provokes such a knee-jerk reaction among everyone who is not a nuclear scientist that it is exactly the opposite of what you need in understanding the past.”

The past that Nelson refers to is “the period from the 1895 discovery of x rays to the 2011 disaster at the Japanese nuclear power plant in Fukushima,” writes book reviewer Alvin Saperstein, a physicist and fellow at Wayne State University’s Center for Peace and Conflict Studies. Nelson chooses to tell the story through the atomic era’s “heroes and villains.”

Among the heroes is Austrian physicist Lise Meitner, a codiscoverer of nuclear fission. Among the villains is Meitner’s colleague, German chemist Otto Hahn, who alone received the 1944 chemistry Nobel Prize for that discovery. Nelson says Meitner “lost her place in history to Nazis for being Jewish and then again in the postwar world to men for being a woman.”

For Saperstein, the book was “an interesting and well-written account of the impact of nuclear physics on society.” He writes, “Many historical and biographical facts presented in The Age of Radiance—certainly many aspects of the behavior of its heroes and villains—were new to me.” However, he takes issue with Nelson’s claim that the atomic era has essentially ended and notes that the book’s own later chapters “give ample evidence for the continuing and pervasive role of x rays and radioactivity in medicine and daily life.” But in the Q&A, Nelson stood firm on his assessment: “Do I think nuclear medicine, power, and weaponry will imminently and wholly disappear from the face of the Earth? No. Do I think the atomic age is fading into a vague nostalgia? Yes.”

Do you agree with Nelson or with Saperstein?

The Science of Ocean Waves: Ripples, Tsunamis, and Stormy Seas by J. B. Zirker (Johns Hopkins U. Press, 2013; $39.95). “Few topics in physics can match the complexity of air–sea interactions,” writes Alexander Babanin, director of the Centre for Ocean Engineering, Science, and Technology at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. Therefore it is no surprise that astrophysicist Jack Zirker, professor emeritus at the National Solar Observatory, “a practitioner in a similarly complex system, took up the challenge of summarizing for the general reader the modern scientific view on ocean waves.” Babanin ends his review by calling The Science of Ocean Waves “a truly remarkable achievement [that has] a great chance to become a standard text for students, scientists, weather and ocean forecasters, engineers, climate modelers, and anyone else whose curiosity or professional interests relate to ocean waves.”

Between beginning and end, the reviewer provides examples that back his endorsement. “Zirker’s deep insights, historic perspectives, and excellent narrative, which he provides with minimal graphics and without a single equation, make the book a fascinating read.” Also, “Zirker’s may be the first book to reconstruct the continuing development of [numerical wave modeling] from the early attempts dictated by naval needs during World War II to modern-day global-wave forecasts and hindcasts.”

If numerical wave modeling doesn’t interest you, the book also discusses “maritime engineering problems such as ship waves, which slow ships down, and how those problems are linked to naval architecture and the increasingly relevant issue of harnessing ocean-wave energy,” writes Babanin. In the final chapter, Zirker discusses his expectations for developments in ocean-wave science. “Quite rightly,” writes Babanin, “he stresses the role—yet to be fully appreciated—of ocean waves in large-scale air–sea interactions and climate systems.”

Einstein and the Quantum: The Quest of the Valiant Swabian by A. Douglas Stone (Princeton U. Press, 2013; $29.95). Is it possible that Albert Einstein is actually underappreciated? Author and Yale University condensed-matter physicist A. Douglas Stone argues that “the creation saga [of quantum theory], as commonly narrated, seriously understates the immense breadth and depth of Einstein’s contributions.” Book reviewer and MIT atomic physicist Daniel Kleppner agrees with that viewpoint. He writes that Einstein “sabotaged” the history of his role when he “balked at quantum mechanics’ ‘spooky action at a distance’” and devoted his scientific memoir to general relativity, making only “scant mention of quantum mechanics.” Einstein, Kleppner writes, is “better known for denouncing quantum theory than for creating it.”

Kleppner relays several examples in the book that emphasize Einstein’s critical role in the field’s creation. “Rather than accept [Max] Planck’s hypothesis that the energy of matter is quantized, Einstein proved that for statistical mechanics to be consistent, the energy of radiation must be quantized,” writes Kleppner. Also, “Einstein had fully appreciated the significance of wave–particle duality; in 1909 he had discovered that the fluctuations of thermal radiation simultaneously display both wave-like and particle-like behavior.”

The book also contains some personal aspects of the iconic physicist. The subtitle, Valiant Swabian, was “Einstein’s signature to Mileva Marić in the early days of their courtship, before fate propelled his career upward and their marriage fell apart.” Overall, writes Kleppner, the book is “delightful to read. . . . By avoiding mathematics, Stone makes his book accessible to general readers, but even physicists who are well versed in Einstein and his physics are likely to find new insights into the most remarkable mind of the modern era.”

Wizards, Aliens, and Starships: Physics and Math in Fantasy Science Fiction by Charles L. Adler (Princeton U. Press, 2014; $29.95). This book “offers a totally unconventional way” for anyone with a knowledge of high school physics and algebra to study basic concepts in modern physics, writes reviewer Edward Belbruno. “What immediately caught my attention,” the Princeton University cosmologist writes, “was the passion and excitement that author Charles Adler instills in the text. I couldn’t put it down.”

For Belbruno, the book “sets itself apart in the first few chapters with its discussion of the physics of the Harry Potter series.” It also discusses “the power of ‘disapparation,’ the ability to vanish from one location and then reappear almost immediately someplace else"—a la the Star Trek transporter machine. And Adler “brings some incredible concepts to life in his discussion of building artificial worlds, such as the one in Larry Niven’s classic [novel] Ringworld, about an enormous ring-like structure surrounding a star.”

A physics professor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, Adler told Physics Today in a Bookends Q&A that he sees no conflict between his work as a physicist and his love of science fiction. “I. I. Rabi said that physicists are the Peter Pans of the human race; in many ways we view the world with the same excitement as children do, and children always have a big dose of fantasy in their worldview,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with that as long as you are clear which part is the fantasy.”