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Readings

Below are some reading strategies for history courses as well as a bibliography of course readings by session.

Some Reading Strategies for History Courses
A List of Informal Suggestions*

History isn't just about learning facts and dates. It's also about understanding how and why things happened. So don't get bogged down in taking in all the facts and dates, at the expense of the big picture. The key is to ask yourself, "Why would this event be important, and how does it relate to other events?" These questions give you the framework to hang your facts and dates on. For instance, it's not so important to remember all the dates that show up in the narratives, but rather to ask, "Which dates refer to especially significant things, and what do they tell us about the order in which things happened?" This is not to say that you can forget all facts and dates, but it is to suggest remembering them within a meaningful context.
History readings often give you more details of information than you actually need to remember. Again, here the big picture is important. Authors of historical accounts often include details to make their cases more persuasive or appealing. But on the same principle as above, not all of these details need to be noted down and stored away.
History is interpretive. This means that people will sometimes tell different stories about events or attribute different significance to them. When you read history you should keep in mind that the accounts you have before you do not represent the final truth. This does not mean that history is simply made up or that "anything goes." Rather, these historical accounts represent the efforts of (usually) intelligent, thoughtful people to make sense of what we can find out about what happened in the past.
History courses often have a lot of reading. Therefore you need to practice active, intelligent reading. Keep asking yourself, "What is the point of this book or article? What am I supposed to be getting out of it?" Then organize your reading around answering those questions. Often it helps to scan material quickly to get a sense of what the point is before really getting into it; often it helps to look back over it after reading it to fix the main points in your understanding.
History courses use different kinds of materials that demand different kinds of reading. For instance, a narrative of someone's life will probably be quicker and easier to read than a historian's analysis of an event and its reasons. A collection of primary documents will make you ask different questions than will a textbook account.

* Courtesy of Professor Cathryn Carson, University of California at Berkeley. Used with permission.

Bibliography of Course Readings

Reading assignments marked with an asterisk (*), should be completed before each lecture.

SES #	TOPICS	READINGS
I. Introduction and Background
Week 1: Course Organization and Introduction
1	Introductory Lecture	Begin reading Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist, to be completed by session #3.
Week 2: The Nineteenth-Century Legacy
2	Maxwell, Electrodynamics, and Cambridge Wranglers	* Maxwell, James Clerk. Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. 3rd ed. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon, 1892, pp. v-xii, 155-68. * Hunt, Bruce J. The Maxwellians. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991, pp. 73-107.
3	Mechanical and Electrodynamical World Pictures, and the Rise of Theoretical Physics	Finish reading Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist.
II. Einstein: Relativity, Quanta, and the Philosopher-Scientist
Week 3: The Origins of Special Relativity: Physical, Philosophical, Experimental
4	Special Relativity and the Ether	* Newton, Isaac. "Scholium." In Newton: Texts, Backgrounds, Commentaries. Edited by I. Bernard Cohen, and Richard Westfall. New York: W. W. Norton, 1995, pp. 231-3. * Mach, Ernst. The Science of Mechanics. LaSalle: Open Court, 1960, pp. 271-5. * Einstein, Albert. "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies." In Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity: Emergence and Early Interpretation(1905-1911). Translated and reprinted by Arthur I. Miller (1905). Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1981, pp. 392-6.
5	Einstein and Experiment	* Holton, Gerald. "Mach, Einstein, and the Search for Reality." In Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought: Kepler to Einstein, by Gerald Holton. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973 [1988], pp. 237-77. * Miller, Arthur I. "The Special Theory of Relativity: Einstein's Response to the Physics of 1905." In Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Perspectives. Edited by Gerald Holton, and Yehudah Elkana. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982, pp. 3-26.
Week 4: From the Special to the General Theory
6	The Reception of Special Relativity	* Warwick, Andrew. "Cambridge Mathematics and Cavendish Physics: Cunningham, Campbell, and Einstein's Relativity, 1905-1911. Part I: The Uses of Theory." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 23 (1992): 625-56.
7	The Origins of General Relativity	* Poincaré, Henri. Science and Hypothesis. New York: Dover, 1952 [1900], pp. 72-5. * Einstein, Albert. "What is the Theory of Relativity?" In Ideas and Opinions by Albert Einstein. Edited by Carl Seelig. New York: Crown Publishers, 1954, pp. 227-32. * Kaiser, David. "General Relativity Primer." Unpublished manuscript (© 1998). * Graham, Loren. "The Reception of Einstein's Ideas: Two Examples from Contrasting Political Cultures." In Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Perspectives. Edited by Gerald Holton, and Yehudah Elkana. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982, pp. 107-36.
Week 5: From Quantum Theory to Quantum Mechanics
8	Radiation, Quanta, and Atoms, 1900-1913	* Segrè, Emilio. From X-Rays to Quarks: Modern Physicists and Their Discoveries. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1980, pp. 61-77. * Heilbron, John L. "Bohr's First Theories of the Atom." In Niels Bohr: A Centenary Volume. Edited by A. P. French, and P. J. Kennedy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985, pp. 33-49.
9	Matrices and Waves	* Heisenberg, Werner. "Quantum-Theoretical Re-Interpretation of Kinematic and Mechanical Relations." Translated and reprinted in Sources of Quantum Mechanics. Edited by B. L. van der Waerden. New York: Dover, 1967, pp. 261-6. * Moore, Walter. Schrödinger: Life and Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 191-200.
Week 6: Interpreting Quantum Mechanics
10	The Einstein-Bohr Debate	* Mermin, N. David. "Quantum Mysteries for Anyone." Journal of Philosophy 78 (1981): 397-408. * Bohr, Niels. "The Bohr-Einstein Dialogue." In Niels Bohr: A Centenary Volume. Edited by A. P. French, and P. J. Kennedy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985, pp. 121-40.
11	The Contexts of Quanta: Weimar Germany, Interwar US	* Forman, Paul. "Weimar Culture, Causality, and Quantum Theory, 1918-1927: Adaptation by German Physicists and Mathematicians to a Hostile Intellectual Environment." In Darwin to Einstein: Historical Studies on Science and Belief. Edited by Colin Chant and John Fauvel. New York: Longman, 1980, pp. 267-302. * Assmus, Alexi. "The Americanization of Molecular Physics." Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 23 (1992): 1-34.
Week 7: Midterm Extravaganza
		Begin reading Frayn, Michael. Copenhagen.
12	In-class Midterm Examination
III. Oppenheimer: Physics, Physicists, and the State
Week 8: Shifting Topics and Centers
13	Nuclear Physics in the 1930s; From Europe to America	* Kevles, Daniel J. The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987 [1978], pp. 222-35, 282-6.
14	Physics under Hitler: deutsche Physik and the bomb	* The Farm Hall Transcripts. Edited by Charles Frank. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, pp. 70-91. Frayn, Michael. Copenhagen.
Week 9: The Physicists' War
15	Physics in the US: Radar and the Atomic Bomb	Badash, Lawrence. Scientists and the Development of Nuclear Weapons, pp. 27-47. * Serber, Robert, with Robert Crease, Peace and War: Reminiscences of a Life on the Frontiers of Science. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998, pp. 121-44.
16	Film: The Day After Trinity	* Smyth, Henry DeWolf. Atomic Energy for Military Purposes. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945, pp. 206-26. * Oppenheimer, J. Robert. "Speech to the Association of Los Alamos Scientists, November 2, 1945." In Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections. Edited by Alice Kimball Smith, and Charles Weiner. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980, pp. 315-25.
Week 10: The H-Bomb and Beyond
17	McCarthyism and the Oppenheimer Hearing	* Kipphardt, Heinar. In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Play Freely Adapted on the Basis of the Documents. Translated by Ruth Speirs. New York: Hill and Wang, 1967 [1964], pp. 69-96. * Schrecker, Ellen. The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford Books, 1994, pp. 32-40, 210-14. Badash, Lawrence. Scientists and the Development of Nuclear Weapons, pp. 63-79, 102-8.
18	Film: The Decision to Build the H-Bomb	Badash, Lawrence. Scientists and the Development of Nuclear Weapons, pp. 48-62, 80-88. * Bernstein, Jeremy. "The Need to Know." In Asymptotic Realms of Physics: Essays in Honor of Francis E. Low. Edited by Alan H. Guth, Kerson Huang, and Robert L. Jaffe. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983, pp. xvii-xxiv.
IV. Feynman and Postwar American Theory
Week 11: Particles and Fields
19	The Rise of Big Science	* Schweber, S. S. "The Mutual Embrace of Science and the Military: ONR and the Growth of Physics in the United States after World War II." In Science, Technology, and the Military. Edited by Everett Mendelsohn, Merritt Roe Smith, and Peter Weingart. Boston: Kluwer, 1988, pp. 3-45.
20	The Conservative Revolution: QED and Renormalization	* Feynman, Richard. QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985, pp. 77-101.
Week 12: Conundrums and Conflict in Particle Theory
21	The Challenge to Field Theory	* Chew, Geoffrey. "Impasse for the Elementary-Particle Concept." In The Sciences Today. Edited by Robert Hutchins, and Mortimer Adler. New York: Arno, 1977 [1974], pp. 366-99.
22	Quarks, Gauge Fields, and the Rise of the Standard Model	* Fritzsch, Harald. Quarks: The Stuff of Matter. New York: Basic Books, pp. 47-87, 123-37.
Week 13: Solid-State Physics in the Lab and in the Factory
23	Building a Solid-State Community	* Kragh, Helge. Quantum Generations: A History of Physics in the Twentieth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999, pp. 366-75. * Riordan, Michael, and Lillian Hoddeson. Crystal Fire: The Invention of the Transistor and the Birth of the Information Age. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997, pp. 55-70.
Week 14: Cosmology and Unification
24	Big Bang v. Steady-State Cosmology	* Kragh, Helge. "Big Bang Cosmology." In Cosmology: Historical, Literary, Philosophical, Religious, and Scientific Perspectives. Edited by Norriss Hetherington. New York: Garland, 1993, pp. 371-89. * ———. "Steady State Theory." In Cosmology: Historical, Literary, Philosophical, Religious, and Scientific Perspectives. Edited by Norriss Hetherington. New York: Garland, 1993, pp. 391-404. * Hoyle, Fred. The Nature of the Universe. New York: Harper and Row, 1950, pp. 133-42.
25	Inflation and Superstrings	* Galison, Peter. "Theory Bound and Unbound: Superstrings and Experiment." In Laws of Nature: Essays on the Philosophical, Scientific, and Historical Dimensions. Edited by Friedel Weinert. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1995, pp. 369-408.
Week 15: Summary
26	Course Summary

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