Entry tags:

history, science

Reader's Guide to the History of Science
Reader's Guide to the History of Science

Edited by Arne Hessenbruch.

Published by Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000.

This is a big fat book, hardbound, measuring 9" by 11" by 2.5" and running to 934 pages plus 29 pages of preferatory material.

The book is something a bit different from an encyclopedia of the history of science, being instead a guide to the literature on the history of science in the form of a large collection of annotated bibliographies.

The preferatory material includes an editor's note, a list of the members of the board of advisers, a list of contributors (long), an alphabetical listing of all the entries, and a thematically-divided list of entries. Entries are mostly around a page and a half in length. There are about 500 entries, on individuals, disciplines, institutions, and broad themes. Each begins with a list of the books and articles that it discusses, and then essentially does a literature review that helps explain this history of the topic it's addressing.

The first fifteen items in the "M" sequence are:

• Mach, Ernst
  
• Madness
  
• Magnetism
  
• Malaria
  
• Malthus, Thomas
  
• Malthusianism
  
• Management Sciences
  
• Marey, Etienne-Jules
  
• Marshall, Alfred
  
• Martineau, Harriet
  
• Marx, Karl
  
• Marxism and Science
  
• Materials Science
  
• Mathematical Instruments
  
• Mathematical Modernity
  

This is quite a useful book, because in addition to serving its main purpose as a bibliographic guide to the literature on the history of science, the entries have explanatory value in and of themselves.

Fitzroy Dearborn publishes some books like it in a number of other areas.