Review by Choice Review
Porter states that his book is not ". . . about conflict in physics, but rather about individuals caught up in conflict because of their physics." To this end, he has written a well-documented work that covers the development of the ideas involved in the controversy and the political, social, and religious environments surrounding it; he adds vivid sketches of the personalities of the principal players in the controversy. Some of these sketches go into considerable detail, such as the one in which the author considers Galileo's life from youth to conflict in his later years, and the case of Oppenheimer, where the reader is given a very good picture of the scientist as an individual, administrator, and researcher who is thrown into a political and social environment that finally smothers him. The amount of detail is surprising for a small book, and Porter goes beyond a simple narrative of historical fact in order to give the reader a sense of the forces that lead to the controversy and insight into the people caught up in that controversy. All levels. P. R. Douville; emeritus, Central Connecticut State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
