A Scientist in the City

In his previous books, A Scientist At  The Seashore and Meditations At  Sunset, James Trefil used commonplace  settings in the natural world as a point of departure  for probing the mysteries of nature. In A  Scientist In The City, Trefil takes the  opposite tack, looking at the quintessential  man-made environment of the city as a way of examining  the forces that define our world. What does the  heating system of a building or the construction of  a bridge tell us about the development of a city?  What does the amplified environmental stress of  city life on plants and animals suggest about the  wild? How have scientific advances in building  materials and an understanding of the structure of the  atom helped to shape the cities of today? From an  explanation of the evolution and influence of  plate glass to reinforced steel to an analysis of the  future of the skyscraper, A Scientist In  The City offers a fascinating study of  the promise and the consequences of technology in  our everyday urban lives. In addition, Trefil goes  on to explore how the new technologies being  developed today will help to determine the changing  forms that cities will take in the future. A  Scientist In The City is the kind of  book that will open our eyes to the man-made world  around us, and show us some of the scientific  reasons for why we live the way we do."Clear and  coherent...refreshingly clear-eyed and  unsentimental."-- Washington Post.

"A highly readable look at cities that casually  ranges from mudhuts to glass-and-steel skyscrapers,  from the atomic structure of iron to the top of the  Sears Tower in Chicago." -- San  Francisco Chronicle.James Trefil, the Robinson Professor of Physics at George Mason University, is the author of more than 40 books and 100 articles in professional journals. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the World Economic Forum. He is the recipient of the Andrew Gemant Award from the American Institute of Physics, the Westinghouse and Subaru Awards from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the 2008 Science Writing Award from the American Physical Society.