It's rare to find a book on science by a scientist that is readable by the lay public. It's even more rare to find a book on science written by a non-scientist that is readable by the lay public and yet meets with the approval of scientists. Such a book is The Age of Science: What Scientists Learned in the Twentieth Century, by Gerard Piel (Basic Books: New York, NY; 2001). Piel, the former publisher of the highly respected magazine Scientific American, has written an instructive and engaging volume that covers the major scientific developments of the 20th century, and puts those achievements in a historical context.
The apparently irresistible desire of the human race to make things go faster can be a risky business. I was reminded of this last year when the remains of world- and water-speed record holder Donald Campbell were recovered from the bottom of England's Lake Coniston after 34 yearsCampbell was killed in 1967 in his boat "Bluebird" while trying to exceed 300 mph and break his own water speed record. Fortunately, not all attempts to go faster involve life-threatening events, but risk comes in many forms. In this month's "Optical Networking" feature, contributing editor Jeff Hecht explains many of the tough technical problems involved with raising fiberoptic data transmission rates to 40 Gbit/s. The carriers' decision to implement 40-Gbit/s transmission (or not) will be predicated at least in part on an assessment of the business risks involved even as the technical problems of speeding up transmission are gradually solved (see p. 87).