Book to Note

Alberto P. Guimarães. From Lodestone to Supermagnets: Understanding Magnetic Phenomena. Hoboken , NJ : Wiley-VCH, 2005. xii + 236 pp. $32.50.

Reviewed by Keith Nier

Neither a popular-science exposition of the current understanding of magnetism, nor a history of the development of scholarship on magnetism, this book is pitched at the level of good journalism about magnetic phenomena and recent magnetic technology. Alberto Guimarães reports on recent scientific discoveries, identifies the people most directly involved, and provides historical context. Details of research—experimentation, technology, or mathematics—are almost totally avoided. Once the reader accepts the book’s character it can stimulate as well as inform. It compellingly relates our widespread dependence on human mastery of magnetic effects and can serve as a list of future topics for research by historians of technology. Guimarães points to many recent developments, particularly in chemistry and materials science, that have received little if any scrutiny from scholars. CHF’s research into the chemical history of electronics is a good start in correcting this oversight, but more exciting work remains to be done on the aspects of magnetic and electromagnetic materials and phenomena set forth in this brief book.