Rating: 
Summary: THIS WAS GOOD.
Review: One of the promotional statements on the book's jacket describes it as being similar to David Sobel's book "Longitude." I agree. There are some distinct similarities, and I think that if you liked "Longitude," you will probably enjoy "Absolute Zero" every bit as much.Though this is a good book it's not quite what I was looking for. The book is strictly a history book, while I was looking for something that would have emphasized the scientific aspects more than Shachtman does. For example, the book describes the work by scientists to get as close as possible to absolute zero, but it never gives an adequate definition of what absolute zero really is. While it would have taken some mathematics and a little physics, a better description of the physics would have added considerably to this book. [For a good discussion of the physics - still at an introductory level - I suggest "Temperatures Very Low and Very High," by Mark W. Zemansky. This book, published by Dover, has only 127 pages. So the price is right, and it makes a nice companion volume (read it first) to Shachtman's book.] Another thing that bothered me about this book is that it has no figures or illustrations. That's a big problem for a book that is constantly trying to describe this or that configuration of scientific equipment. There are at least a dozen places in the text where I found myself reading it and then reading it over again, trying to understand some convoluted description of apparatus when a simple diagram would have taken care of the problem. A third problem I have with this book is the author's occasional lapse in describing scientific principles. For example, he describes quantum-mechanical tunneling as a process "in which the particles do not overcome the energy of the atoms in their way but instead find a route between the atoms in the wall." [p. 227] This is a very misleading description of quantum-mechanical tunneling. In another place he describes the speeds of particles in a particle accelerator: "physicists had relied for investigation of these latter particles on linear accelerators that raised the particles' speed to several thousand miles per hour and let them smash into obstacles, or each other, and disintegrate into interesting pieces." [p. 231] This statement has the particles in an accelerator traveling about the same speed as an SR-71 jet. In reality, particle accelerators move atomic particles at nearly the speed of light, or virtually 186,000 miles per second. So my greatest objection to the book is that it was written by an historian and not a scientist. But don't infer from my comments that I think this is a bad book. I really did like it, and found it engaging and difficult to put down. One of the best aspects of this book is the way it illustrates the conflict and competition between scientists. Sometimes there is a tendency to have an antiseptic view of science, in which noble individuals, in white coats, struggle against ignorance for the betterment of society. Not so. In reality there were intense rivalries and bitter feuds, and these are laid out bare in the human struggle that Shachtman describes in his story of the conquest of cold. The book not only describes the historical progress among scientists, but also describes the influence that the technology of generating cold temperatures had on more practical aspects of society. There is some very interesting historical information about the natural-ice industry that existed prior to development of modern-day refrigeration, and how the ice was cut up at the end of the winter and put into storage, and then shipped to regions around the world. There are also stories about how the invention of modern refrigeration facilitated settling in the southern portions of the United States. Mostly, though, the stories focus on the scientists who spent their lives and sometimes livelihoods trying to get closer and closer to absolute zero. The book is pretty up to date, and includes historical developments around the invention of high-temperature super conductors (high temperature, in this case, being over 77 K, which is the temperature at which nitrogen liquefies). There is also some history around the verification of the Bose-Einstein condensate at 170 billions of a degree K. Overall I think this is a fine book. It was certainly captivating, well written, and enjoyable.
Rating: 
Summary: A history book
Review: One of the promotional statements on the book's jacket describes it as being similar to David Sobel's book "Longitude." I agree. There are some distinct similarities, and I think that if you liked "Longitude," you will probably enjoy "Absolute Zero" every bit as much. Though this is a good book it's not quite what I was looking for. The book is strictly a history book, while I was looking for something that would have emphasized the scientific aspects more than Shachtman does. For example, the book describes the work by scientists to get as close as possible to absolute zero, but it never gives an adequate definition of what absolute zero really is. While it would have taken some mathematics and a little physics, a better description of the physics would have added considerably to this book. [For a good discussion of the physics - still at an introductory level - I suggest "Temperatures Very Low and Very High," by Mark W. Zemansky. This book, published by Dover, has only 127 pages. So the price is right, and it makes a nice companion volume (read it first) to Shachtman's book.] Another thing that bothered me about this book is that it has no figures or illustrations. That's a big problem for a book that is constantly trying to describe this or that configuration of scientific equipment. There are at least a dozen places in the text where I found myself reading it and then reading it over again, trying to understand some convoluted description of apparatus when a simple diagram would have taken care of the problem. A third problem I have with this book is the author's occasional lapse in describing scientific principles. For example, he describes quantum-mechanical tunneling as a process "in which the particles do not overcome the energy of the atoms in their way but instead find a route between the atoms in the wall." [p. 227] This is a very misleading description of quantum-mechanical tunneling. In another place he describes the speeds of particles in a particle accelerator: "physicists had relied for investigation of these latter particles on linear accelerators that raised the particles' speed to several thousand miles per hour and let them smash into obstacles, or each other, and disintegrate into interesting pieces." [p. 231] This statement has the particles in an accelerator traveling about the same speed as an SR-71 jet. In reality, particle accelerators move atomic particles at nearly the speed of light, or virtually 186,000 miles per second. So my greatest objection to the book is that it was written by an historian and not a scientist. But don't infer from my comments that I think this is a bad book. I really did like it, and found it engaging and difficult to put down. One of the best aspects of this book is the way it illustrates the conflict and competition between scientists. Sometimes there is a tendency to have an antiseptic view of science, in which noble individuals, in white coats, struggle against ignorance for the betterment of society. Not so. In reality there were intense rivalries and bitter feuds, and these are laid out bare in the human struggle that Shachtman describes in his story of the conquest of cold. The book not only describes the historical progress among scientists, but also describes the influence that the technology of generating cold temperatures had on more practical aspects of society. There is some very interesting historical information about the natural-ice industry that existed prior to development of modern-day refrigeration, and how the ice was cut up at the end of the winter and put into storage, and then shipped to regions around the world. There are also stories about how the invention of modern refrigeration facilitated settling in the southern portions of the United States. Mostly, though, the stories focus on the scientists who spent their lives and sometimes livelihoods trying to get closer and closer to absolute zero. The book is pretty up to date, and includes historical developments around the invention of high-temperature super conductors (high temperature, in this case, being over 77 K, which is the temperature at which nitrogen liquefies). There is also some history around the verification of the Bose-Einstein condensate at 170 billions of a degree K. Overall I think this is a fine book. It was certainly captivating, well written, and enjoyable.
Rating:
Summary: Great Beach Reading
Review: This is a good book to read to clear your head of non-science, particularly if you are not a scientist. It achieves the goal of the Sloan Foundation funding, which is to popularize science by disconnecting it from the diagrams and equations that some of the other reviewers here are lamenting the absence of. Well, that's what made it so readable for me. I like science but not math. At least not sciency-math. We learn from this book that it is the businessmen who have fueled applied cold research, and many people who also are ignorant of math have benefitted from the resulting frozen food industry and from air conditioning. All products of the very deliberate conquest of Thule, very engagingly explained by the author. This book reminds me of how appropriate the chief guy (what's his name, "Lee"? Anyway, the guy who won't let you chew gum in the airport there) in Singapore's comments were in the Wall Street Journal, when they asked a cross section of famous people what the greatest invention of the last millenium has been. His reply: "Air conditioning." It all makes sense when you read this on the beach, before heading to your air conditioned condo, or to your air conditioned car, to get your keys to go get pre-cooled cokes from the refrigerator unit at the air conditioned 7-11, right next to the Slurpee machine and the little display of fresh fruit. I agree with some of the reviews that the book is a little disjointed, but offer that this in turn illuminates some of the idiosyncracies of several key scientists who would, for example, devote 15 years to trying to boil helium. Whatever you do for a living, compared to that, seems like a breeze. A cool breeze. Which you can feel without quantifying via incomprehensible, gnostic and exlusivist equations whose chief function is to blur this science beyond comprehensibility for long-winded reviewers like me.
Rating:
Summary: Very Well Written Understandable Yet Technical Book
Review: This is a very interesting book. The technology discussed is complex, but the complexity never gets in the way or leaves the reader wondering what the author is talking about. I highly recommend this book especially for those interested in the history of industrial revolution, or in the sequence of discoveries leading to the discovery of super conductors.
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