Chemical Education Today edited by
Book & Media Reviews
Jeffrey Kovac University of Tennessee Knoxville, TN 37996-1600
Chemical History: Reviews of the Recent Literature edited by Colin A. Russell and Gerrylynn K. Roberts RSC Publishing: Cambridge, England, 2006. 247 pp. ISBN 0854044647. $150 reviewed by Jeffrey Kovac
This book, a successor to Recent Developments in the History of Chemistry (1), reviews the literature in the history of chemistry over the past 20 years. After an initial chapter entitled “Getting To Know History of Chemistry” that outlines trends in the literature and lists general and biographical works, there are chapters reviewing the literature in more specific fields: all the major subdisciplines of chemistry, chemistry before 1800, and instruments and apparatus. Each chapter contains a bibliographic essay that is a guide to an extensive list of references.
www.JCE.DivCHED.org
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Only specialists in the history of chemistry will want this volume on their personal bookshelves, but every good chemistry library collection should have a copy. Readers who are interested in learning something about chemical history should certainly look at Chapter 1, which contains a nice guide to the general histories of chemistry published in the past 20 years, classifying them according to the appropriate audience: which is best for the newcomer, the chemistry teacher, the historian, and so forth. As your interests become more specialized, the remainder of the book will point you to the relevant books and articles. Literature Cited 1. Russell, C. A., Ed. Recent Developments in the History of Chemistry; Royal Society of Chemistry: London, 1985.
Jeffrey Kovac is in the Department of Chemistry, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996-1600; jkovac @utk.edu.
Vol. 83 No. 8 August 2006
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Journal of Chemical Education
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