Pursuing Power and Light: Technology and Physics from James Watt to Albert Einstein, Bruce J.Hunt, Johns Hopkins U. Press, Baltimore, MD, 2010. $45.00 (182 pp.). ISBN 978-0-8018-9358-2

Bruce Hunt’s fine introduction to the history of physics in the 19th century is couched in a long tradition of studies linking science and technology. As is common in this tradition, science and scientists are more central to Pursuing Power and Light: Technology and Physics from James Watt to Albert Einstein than are technology, engineers, or inventors. The book’s strong treatment of thermodynamics, kinetic theory, and electromagnetism befits the author of The Maxwellians (Cornell University Press, 1991) and one of the foremost authorities on James Clerk Maxwell and his followers.

For historians of science and technology, Pursuing Power and Light breaks no new ground. Hunt takes us through such familiar territory as the problems...

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