Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics

  • Ruth Lewin Sime
University of California Press:, $16.95

“A detailed new biography…. Written by the American chemist Ruth Lewin Sime, it is clearly a labour of dedication, if not of love; it seems to have taken her 20 years to write. It is also a partisan book. Sime clearly does not like Meitner's German colleagues such as Heisenberg, von Weizsäcker and Meitner's life-long friend and co-worker Otto Hahn. As I don't much like them either, her point of view does not bother me at all, although it may trouble some readers”, wrote Jeremy Bernstein in Nature 380, 33; (1996)).

Bombardier Beetles and Fever Trees: A Close-up Look at Chemical Warfare and Signals in Animals and Plants

  • William Agosta
Helix Books (Addison-Wesley), $13

“A lucid account of the chemistry behind the natural world. As part of the current renaissance in popular science books written by leading scientists, it may help to do for chemistry what others have done for evolution and genetics”, wrote Tristam D. Wyatt in Nature 381, 289; (1996).

Feynman's Lost Lecture: The Motion of the Planets Around the Sun

  • David L. Goodstein &
  • Judith R. Goodstein
Vintage, £6.99

“The book goes over some well-trodden history, from Copernicus through Newton to Einstein, and contains reminiscences about Feynman…. The core of the book is a step-by-step account of [Feynman's] argument that will be accessible to any science student, from sixth-form (high-school) level upwards”, wrote Paul Murdin in Nature 380, 289; (1996).