Picturing The Cosmos: A Visual History of Early Soviet Space Endeavor

Iina Kohonen

CHICAGO UNIVERSITY PRESS: 2017. 132 PP. £27.50

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union played a key role in ushering in the space age. A symbol of power, outer space exploration was inextricably tied to the politics of that era. Kohonen uses an archive of visual media produced in the Soviet Union between 1957 and 1969 to expose the mixture of intense visual propaganda and strict censorship. Among other topics, the author explores the idea of cosmonauts being presented as prototypes of the perfect communist citizen.

The Cosmic Zoo: Complex Life on Many Worlds

Dirk Schulze-Makuch and William Bains

SPRINGER: 2017. 232 PP. £19.50

The search for extraterrestrial intelligent life has persistently driven the exploration of the Universe. Schulze-Makuch and Bains ask: what are the key steps required for intelligent life to arise? If these conditions are likely to exist, what factors might then hide intelligent ‘aliens’ from our view? The book draws its ideas from a large number of disciplines that include astronomy, biology, chemistry, geology and sociology to paint a complex picture of intelligence on Earth and potentially beyond.

The Strength in Numbers: The New Science of Team Science

Barry Bozeman and Jan Youtie

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS: 2017. 248 PP. £27.95

Astronomy is becoming an increasingly collaborative science both due to the complexity of the questions we ask and the mounting cost of the experiments we perform to tackle them. But how do these collaborations work? Bozeman and Youtie present a detailed treatise on the science of collaborations, why they work, why they fail and how they can be optimized. They present their own survey data and testimonies but also collate a valuable compendium of references on the topic.

Modern Classical Physics: Optics, Fluids, Plasmas, Elasticity, Relativity, and Statistical Physics

Kip S. Thorne and Roger D. Blandford

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS: 2017. 1552 PP. £104.95

Based on more than 35 years of teaching first-year graduate physics courses, Thorne and Blandford put together a tome that covers six broad areas of classical — non-quantum — physics from optics to fluid dynamics and relativity. The reader should have a working knowledge of classic dynamics, thermodynamics and electromagnetism. Either as a teaching resource, a learning resource or simply a reference, this is a book that belongs on every professional physicist’s bookshelf.