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Reviews
Out of the Shadows: Contributions of Twentieth-Century Women to Physics by Nina Byers, Gary Williams
rainbowrachel's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
2.25
I like the concept of this book more than the execution.
It is a series of essays, each by a different author, each covering a different physicist. This has several consequences:
* As expected, the quality of essays varies considerably.
* At only about 10 pages each, there really isn't space to go into any individual's life and works in any great detail.
* Some material -- both the physics and the social background -- ends up repeated multiple times.
* Each essay is celebratory in tone, viewing each woman through rose-tinted glasses. This is fine for an individual essay, but after going through 40 of them, I was growing extremely tired of reading about how they all seemingly farted rainbows.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that this was a bad book, per se, but by the end I was relieved to finally be done with it.
It is a series of essays, each by a different author, each covering a different physicist. This has several consequences:
* As expected, the quality of essays varies considerably.
* At only about 10 pages each, there really isn't space to go into any individual's life and works in any great detail.
* Some material -- both the physics and the social background -- ends up repeated multiple times.
* Each essay is celebratory in tone, viewing each woman through rose-tinted glasses. This is fine for an individual essay, but after going through 40 of them, I was growing extremely tired of reading about how they all seemingly farted rainbows.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that this was a bad book, per se, but by the end I was relieved to finally be done with it.
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