Viking Press

Library Bookwatch, Dec, 2004

Viking Press

375 Hudson Street, New York NY 10014

www.penguinputnam.com

It's hard to easily categorize Richard Panek's The Invisible Century (0670030740 $24.95), which draws important links between Einstein, Freud and works that not only had science in common, but succeeded in changing a century. At once a biographical sketch and a survey of scientific investigation methods, The Invisible Century tells how the works of both men juxtaposed and led to two wholly new fields of science which changed their century: cosmology and psychoanalysis. An excellent series of connections between science and culture is drawn. David Ulin's Myth Of Solid Ground (0670033235, $24.95) is another excellent treatise on earthquakes: it takes both a personal and cultural journey through the behavior of earthquakes and the world of earthquake prediction science, bypassing the largely geological focus of past books to create a layperson's survey of the realities of earthquakes. From an analysis of the lunatic fringe of earthquake predictors who have arisen with various analysis methods to researchers and geologists--some of whom believe earthquakes literally communicate with one another through a process of stress realignment--The Myth Of Solid Ground holds an approach unique in the genre.