Too Hot to Handle: The Race for Cold Fusion

This scholarly expose of the cold fusion controversy, brought public in 1989 at the University of Utah, is two parts chemistry and one part sociology of science as affected by greed. Close ( The Cosmic Onion ), a physicist from Britain's Ritherford Labs and a talented writer, offers a global view of the interactions of the science, politics and personalities involved in what may have been the archetypical science event of the '80s. Lay readers will need their high school chemistry and some physics to follow the detailed chronology of events and players (F. D. Peat's Cold Fusion would be a good reference). The mysteries of matter are often overshadowed by the volatile forces of humans and their institutions in a day-by-day, experiment-by-experiment account that simultaneously meets the tests of good science and good journalism. (May)