Recent acquisitions

The following is a selection of new books in CHF's Othmer library. All of these books are available for borrowing and can be reserved through our online catalog; click on the links for more information.

	Louis Galambos, Takashi Hikino, and Vera Zamagni, eds. The Global Chemical Industry in the Age of the Petrochemical Revolution.  2007. In a time of growing anxiety and eagerness regarding globalization generally and globalized chemical commerce more specifically, this timely volume offers a necessary historical grounding. Contributors to the volume outline the already globalized terrain of the chemical industry after World War II, following traces of company strategies, financial systems, environmental regulations, and the rise and fall of global players.
	Greg Eghigian, Andreas Killen, and Christine Leuenberger, eds. The Self as Project: Politics and the Human Sciences in the Twentieth Century. 2007. Contributors to this volume (vol. 22 in the Osiris series) explore the intersections between politics and developments in the human sciences. Chapters range from studies of deviance in early-19th-century Russia to the status of cells as selves in biotechnology. The volume’s emphasis on the human sciences provides a much-needed counterbalance to the extensive studies already available that explore the relationship between politics and the physical and natural sciences.
	Tara E. Nummedal. Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire.  2007. A powerful duke, a deceitful duchess, and a clever alchemist and his fateful life feature in this scholarly discussion of alchemists in 16th-century German countries. Nummedal’s excellent analysis of how one became an alchemist and how others gained the power to undo an alchemist’s reputation makes for educational yet entertaining reading—not only for historians of alchemy.
	Andrew Weeks, ed. and trans.  Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, 1493–1541): Essential Theoretical Writings. 2008. Paracelsus, the infamous doctor, alchemist, and intellectual troublemaker of the Renaissance, left an almost unmanageable corpus of writings that scholars in Germany have tried to untangle for many years. This substantial volume provides critical editions of Paracelsus’s writings that were first published in a 1589 edition, now presented alongside new English translations. This book is a good source for those who cannot read the original.
	Maurice P. Crosland. Scientific Institutions and Practice in France and Britain , c. 1700–c. 1870.  2007. Lavoisier, Priestley, laboratories, chemistry, and physics feature prominently in Crosland’s scholarship. He investigates the way in which chemistry provided models for the other experimental sciences through the dramatic changes the discipline underwent in its theory, practice, and organization in the 18th and 19th centuries. A collection of previous articles, this volume shows the consistency and the strong arguments that have attracted readers to Crosland’s work for several decades.
	Bruce T. Moran.  Andreas Libavius and the Transformation of Alchemy: Separating Chemical Cultures with Polemical Fire. 2007. It takes an astute, well-read, and sweet-quilled scholar like Moran to write a study on Libavius, the physician, alchemist, and schoolmaster whose substantial oeuvre captures the spirit of chymia, the art that is situated somewhere between alchemy and chemistry. Moran distills all major themes of Libavius’s work into a sweet prose of 300 pages—an elixir that will enlighten any reader interested in the intellectual and artisanal life at the turn of the 17th century.
	Viviane Quirke. Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical Industry: Changing Relationships in Britain and France 1935–1965.  2008. In this extensively researched study of the British and French pharmaceutical industries, Quirke describes the growth of collaborative networks between scientists and drug companies during the mid-20th century. Quirke argues that while each country developed distinctive national systems of innovation, the circulation of the “facts and artifacts” of drug development between the two countries led to the dissemination of a shared culture of research and the transformation of the medical sciences and the pharmaceutical industry in both countries.