Physics in the Twentieth Century

  • Curt Suplee
Abrams, $49.50, £32

Technicians travel by raft under the giant dome of the Kamiokande neutrino detector, a kilometre under a mountain near Tokyo, to clean the faces of photomultipliers. These detect the presence of neutrinos by the light created when they collide with atoms. This is just one of 220 mind-expanding illustrations — with clear, informative text about the advances physics has made this century— in Physics in the Twentieth Century by Curt Suplee (Abrams, $49.50, £32).