A highly accessible survey.
Scientists wield sophisticated new tools as they finally approach some answers to the basic question of how order arises from chaos.
A key figure in the field, Strogatz (Applied Mathematics/Cornell) begins with fireflies, which in several parts of the world synchronize the periods of their blinking. Mathematicians conjectured that this phenomenon was similar to that of runners on a circular track, who tend to bunch up unless their abilities are widely divergent, but it seemed a mere curiosity until other instances of biological synchrony came to light, notably in brain waves and the regulation of heartbeats by specialized cells. Perhaps the most interesting section concerns our circadian rhythms; it explains why accidents cluster at certain times of the day and why the afternoon siesta is common to so many cultures. Other examples of synchrony from daily life include traffic jams and the “wave” performed by stadium crowds. Even the ways in which a crowd degenerates into a riot or a fad sweeps across an entire society obey the same laws as other periodic phenomena, though the details remain obscure. On a wider scale, such quantum phenomena as superconductivity and the rare Bose-Einstein condensates are examples of synchrony, as are the tidal resonances that force the moon to rotate with the same face always toward the Earth. Strogatz recounts the history of his discipline, reaching back as far as the Enlightenment but concentrating primarily on the last 40 years. He highlights chaos theory, the generation of spiral waves in chemical “soup,” and the widely known “six degrees of separation” problem, among other topics, and provides engaging portraits of many of the new field’s specialists, a large number of whom seem to be former students or colleagues.
A highly accessible survey.Pub Date: March 5, 2003
ISBN: 0-7868-6844-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Not only the definitive life, but a tour de force by a master.
One of history’s most prolific inventors receives his due from one of the world’s greatest biographers.
Pulitzer and National Book Award winner Morris (This Living Hand and Other Essays, 2012, etc.), who died this year, agrees that Thomas Edison (1847-1931) almost certainly said, “genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration,” and few readers of this outstanding biography will doubt that he was the quintessential workaholic. Raised in a middle-class Michigan family, Edison displayed an obsessive entrepreneurial spirit from childhood. As an adolescent, he ran a thriving business selling food and newspapers on a local railroad. Learning Morse code, he spent the Civil War as a telegrapher, impressing colleagues with his speed and superiors with his ability to improve the equipment. In 1870, he opened his own shop to produce inventions to order. By 1876, he had money to build a large laboratory in New Jersey, possibly the world’s first industrial research facility. Never a loner, Edison hired talented people to assist him. The dazzling results included the first commercially successful light bulb for which, Morris reminds readers, he invented the entire system: dynamo, wires, transformers, connections, and switches. Critics proclaim that Edison’s innovations (motion pictures, fluoroscope, rechargeable batteries, mimeograph, etc.) were merely improvements on others’ work, but this is mostly a matter of sour grapes. Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone was a clunky, short-range device until it added Edison’s carbon microphone. And his phonograph flabbergasted everyone. Humans had been making images long before Daguerre, but no one had ever reproduced sound. Morris rivetingly describes the personalities, business details, and practical uses of Edison’s inventions as well as the massive technical details of years of research and trial and error for both his triumphs and his failures. For no obvious reason, the author writes in reverse chronological order, beginning in 1920, with each of the seven following chapters backtracking a decade. It may not satisfy all readers, but it works.
Not only the definitive life, but a tour de force by a master.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9311-0
Page Count: 800
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
A book that describes what kangaroos do and offers unusually beautiful pictures of them doing it. One old male bending forward while scratching his back looks like nothing else found in nature- -except maybe a curmudgeonly old baseball manager with arthritis in the late innings of another losing game (in fact, baseball players would appear to be the only animals who scratch themselves as much as kangaroos do—bellies, underarms, Iwago captures every permutation of scratching). At other times, they look preternaturally graceful and serene. Some of Iwago's (Mitsuaki Iwago's Whales, not reviewed) photographic compositions flirt with anthropomorphism and slyly play to our urge to see ourselves in the animals. But kangaroos are so singular that there's always something about the cant of a head or the drape of a limb that makes you think you flatter yourself that there is any kinship. They remain wondrously different.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8118-0785-1
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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