AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age (Sloan Technology Series) by Michael Riordan, Lillian Hoddeson ISBN: 0-393-04124-7 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 August, 1997 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.50

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 4.43 (7 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: True Genius: The Life and Science of John Bardeen
Comment: October 25, 2002

Hoddeson & Daitch, "True Genius" (Bardeen)

Our university bookstore (809 S. Wright St.) kindly informed me of your listing of Hoddeson and Daitch's John Bardeen biography, "True Genius," and, of course, I read the brief "Publishers Weekly" review, as well as the more cryptic but more positive comments of others. From the very first sentence I knew that the "Publishers Weekly" review would be superficial, and maybe even wrong, which then is of what help to a reader and potential book customer? Living in the U.S. democracy, how can we not be curious and not read about the Founders? Similarly, how can we be immersed in all the new electronics (computers, cell phones, DVD and CD machines, MRI's, digital machinery---in fact, Si here, Si there, Si everywhere) and not be curious about how all this happened, what sort of ingenius mind, or minds, might be at the beginning of it all? Imagine the calamity on the planet if the transistor vanished for a day. Does that help in understanding the scale of a Bardeen, of "True Genius"! I knew John Bardeen for 40 years (as my teacher, friend, colleague) and still I learned something further from Hoddeson and Daitch and the material they unearthed for "True Genius", a fascinating biography (a different kind of story). Hoddeson and Daitch do not disappoint in their biography of Bardeen and in elucidating over many chapters his kind of genius, which "Publishers Weekly" doesn't seem to appreciate. Genius is a diamond of many facets, and Hoddeson and Daitch reveal a Bardeen facet. It isn't the last chapter of "True Genius" that matters. It's the whole book, all the chapters, that reveal an American hero---if you will, a genius.

Nick Holonyak, Jr.
John Bardeen Chair Professor of
Electrical and Computer
Engineering and Physics, and
Center for Advanced Study
Professor of Electrical and
Computer Engineering

Rating: 5
Summary: Great Book - A Technology Must Read
Comment: This book is very well written, and does a good job of telling the history of the invention of the transistor. The book focuses on the technological aspects of the invention, but also does a great job of telling the story of the personalities, and (now multi-million dollar) businesses that were involved with the invention.

Rating: 5
Summary: Science as Thriller
Comment: Who would have thought a book about the invention of the transistor could be so compelling? And yet here it is. The authors tell two parallel stories, one about the inventors, and one about the developments in physics that led to, and followed from, the invention of the transistor. The interplay between pure science and technology has seldom been explained as well.

I'd put this book alongside "The Invention That Changed The World" as the two best popular histories of science an technology of the decade.

Similar Books:

	Title: Turbulent Skies : The History of Commercial Aviation (Sloan Technology Series) by T. A. Heppenheimer ISBN: 0471196940 Publisher: Wiley Pub. Date: 06 February, 1998 List Price(USD): $24.95
	Title: Computer: A History of the Information Machine (The Sloan Technology Series) by Martin Campbell-Kelly, William Aspray ISBN: 0465029906 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Pub. Date: 01 May, 1997 List Price(USD): $22.00
	Title: The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene ISBN: 0375412883 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 10 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $28.95