Category Archives: Book Reviews

Two Book Reviews

Blogging has been light here, trying to finish a complete draft of the book I’m working on, this should be done very soon. Here are a couple all-too-short reviews of books with some relation to math or physics. A Doubter’s … Continue reading

Posted in Book Reviews | 8 Comments

Why String Theory?

I recently got a copy of Joseph Conlon’s new book Why String Theory? and was pleasantly surprised to find that it’s quite good. Conlon is a lively, entertaining writer, generally sensible about the scientific issues involved, and I think does … Continue reading

Posted in Book Reviews | 43 Comments

Super and Great Colliders

I’ve recently finished reading two new books on huge collider projects, which make an interesting contrast. The first is From the Great Wall to the Great Collider, by Steve Nadis and Shing-Tung Yau. It’s a very well-informed and topical book, … Continue reading

Posted in Book Reviews, Experimental HEP News | 13 Comments

A Singularly Unfeminine Profession

Phenomenologist Mary K. Gaillard has recently published an autobiographical memoir, with the title A Singularly Unfeminine Profession, and last week’s Nature has a detailed review. Gaillard is a very distinguished HEP phenomenologist, with a career that began in the 1960s, … Continue reading

Posted in Book Reviews | 12 Comments

Genius at Play

A month or two ago I read the new biography of John Conway, Genius at Play, by Siobhan Roberts (whose book about Coxeter I reviewed here). Since then, writing about it has been on my to-do list, but I wasn’t … Continue reading

Posted in Book Reviews | 30 Comments

A Beautiful Question

Frank Wilczek’s new book, A Beautiful Question, is now out and if you’re at all interested in issues about beauty and the deep structure of reality, you should find a copy and spend some time with it. As he explains … Continue reading

Posted in Book Reviews | 37 Comments

Einstein’s Dice and Schrödinger’s Cat

I’ve written a review for the Wall Street Journal of Paul Halpern’s new book Einstein’s Dice and Schrödinger’s Cat (It’s here, unfortunately now behind a paywall [commenter advice is try googling “The Half-life of physicists” and using the Google link]). … Continue reading

Posted in Book Reviews | 15 Comments

The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time

Lee Smolin has a new book out last month, co-written with philosopher Roberto Unger, entitled The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time. To get some idea of what he’s up to, there’s a review by Bryan Appleyard at The … Continue reading

Posted in Book Reviews | 14 Comments

Short Items, and a Quick Book Review

Peter Orland has a new blog, Ensnared in Vacuum, where he’s writing about some non-perturbative QFT questions. Physics Today this month has book reviews of two books about theology and the multiverse (one of which I wrote about here). There … Continue reading

Posted in Book Reviews, Multiverse Mania | 16 Comments

Mathematics Without Apologies

If you’d asked me ten years ago to describe a book I’d love to read that could be characterized as part of an “incredibly unlikely trend in books about math for the general public”, I might have chosen “brilliant meditations … Continue reading

Posted in Book Reviews | 8 Comments