"Seitz Presents a sophisticated, balanced, and practical analysis of the relationship between science and society with a verbal parsimony that some.. might well emulate. Both scientists and literate nonscientists will find this book an easy read that is informative, and intellectually stimulating on a subject that all of us should be thinking about." Interdisciplinary Science Reviews"The book is recommended for all considering a career in the natural sciences as well as for their mentors. It should be required reading for policy makers in science, both academic and governmental. Laymen...

Kip Thorne, along with fellow theorists Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, a cadre of Russians, and earlier scientists such as Oppenheimer, Wheeler and Chandrasekhar, has been in the thick of the quest to secure answers. In this masterfully written and brilliantly informed work of scientific history and explanation, Dr. Thorne, the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech, leads his readers through an elegant, always human, tapestry of interlocking themes, coming finally to a uniquely informed answer to the great question: what principles control our universe and why do physicists...

This work relates selected events in the history of the National Academy focusing on the terms of the various presidents from the first, Alexander D. Bache, the great grandson of Benjamin Franklin, to the most recent, Ralph Cicerone.

Market: General physics community, especially those in condensed matter and crystallography, as well as historians of science. This revealing autobiography by a prominent physicist and distinguished member of the physics community spans the past 60 years. From the people he knew to the events he witnessed, Frederick Seitz's engrossing book covers key developments in physics since the 1930s and includes many anecdotes and never before published photographs.