PositiveThe New York Times Book Review\"The authors have done a remarkable amount of research. The hardcover includes over 100 pages of notes; the list of source materials runs 14 pages ... The book is clearly organized by scientifically minded authors. While varied and associative enough to be interesting, the writing is always directed toward illuminating the research. But there is literary flair to the language as well ... Accessory to War condenses multiple bodies of work into one important, comprehensive and coherent story of the symbiotic developments of astrophysics and war.
Dava Sobel
PositiveThe Barnes & Noble ReviewSobel’s book is slow to launch but once the women do emerge, in their own words, the story comes alive ... Through these first-person glimpses, the Harvard computers come to feel like friends ... Sobel’s book places the Harvard astronomers at the center of the history of science.
Carlo Rovelli
MixedThe Los Angeles Review of Books...a spare, poetic, and thoughtful look at the major revolutions in the field ... What sets it apart is both its breadth and concision: over a hundred years of scientific innovation surveyed in fewer than 90 pages. Rovelli often describes the science in beautifully clear lay terms ... But elsewhere there is simply not enough on the page for a lay reader to grasp the physics ... Seven Brief Lessons is, in other words, an uncluttered book with perhaps a little too much breathing room. The reader is presented the science, but doesn’t always have an opportunity to participate in its unfolding ... To be sure, Rovelli’s poetic and markedly untechnical language is engaging, and, in this way, the book succeeds. But, at the same time, the flagrant omissions, both historical and scientific, erect a barrier between the world of the scientist and that of the reader.
