Cobb obviously takes the long view, interpreting physical chemistry broadly. In fact, it would seem that she subscribes to one of G. N. Lewis’s definitions: “physical chemistry is anything that is interesting”. Her brief accounts of the contributions of Islamic scholars, Renaissance magicians, and the natural philosophers and mathematicians of the Scientific Revolution provide a context for the chemists that followed. The book explains how the efforts of Boyle, Lavoisier, Dalton, and Faraday to apply physical methods to chemical problems made these investigators important predecessors of modern physical chemistry. It then goes on to consider various topics that have become the province of the subdiscipline: atomic theory, thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, kinetics, equilibrium, spectroscopy, and quantum mechanics. The book ends with a section on modern applications and unsolved problems that involve physical chemistry. These include biological and physiological systems and processes, nanotechnology, nonlinear dynamics, and quantum weirdness.

Comparisons with two other histories of physical chemistry are inevitable. Keith J. Laidler’s The World of Physical Chemistry (Oxford University Press, 1993) is a book written by a chemist for chemists. On the other hand, Physical Chemistry from Ostwald to Pauling: The Making of a Science in America (Princeton University Press, 1990) was written by an historian, John W. Servos. Both are superb scholarly works. Magick, Mayhem, and Mavericks appears to have been written for a more general audience. Although it has 437 individual notes, essentially all of the references are to secondary sources. The Dictionary of Scientific Biography alone accounts for over one third of them. Hence there is nothing original in Cobb’s book; rather it is a repackaging of existing information.

In some respects, the author succeeds admirably. She uses a wide range of captivating analogies to explain phenomena and concepts. Gas molecules are gnats or jellyfish, gas viscosity is related to a herd of cows, equilibrium is described in terms of the distribution of guests at a house party, and Brownian motion becomes dirty clothing kicked about by active children. It is not surprising that some of these analogies work better than others, but on balance they suggest that Cobb must be an effective chemistry teacher. (She currently teaches at Aiken Preparatory School in South Carolina and she has taught at Augusta State University.) Her book is also full of vignettes that humanize physical chemists—something that students may think impossible. The fact that she pays more attention to scandal, sex, family life, politics, and psychological aberrations than to single-minded concentration on research saves her heroes and heroines from nerdiness. She characterizes them as “madmen and women who drowned in paralyzing depression one moment and exploded with stellar creativity the next…rebels, recluses, and misanthropes”. Fortunately, this sort of verbal excess is quite rare in what is generally a well-written book.

While I appreciate and applaud Cobb’s goals, as a physical chemist with interests in the history of science, I am dismayed at the number of historical and scientific errors that mar this book. Simplification is unavoidable, indeed necessary, in a popular book like this, but out and out misstatements should be inadmissible. Unfortunately, I could cite a troubling number of instances, but a few will illustrate my point. On p 126 we read about the dinner meeting between Priestley and Lavoisier at which the former informed the latter about the gas released when the red calx of mercury is heated. “It is amazing that the other diners were not blinded by the lightbulbs going off in Lavoisier’s head.” Those anachronistic lightbulbs did not go off because the historical record makes it very clear that it took two and one-half years, a good deal of experimentation, and at least one publicly reported false interpretation before Lavoisier arrived at the conclusion that the gas was a new element, which he called oxygen. The discussion of the data obtained by Boyle in the J-tube experiment that led to the law that bears his name is muddled and misleading and appears to contradict the epigraph for Chapter 8.

An instance of both an historical and a chemical error occurs on p 142 where we learn that Dalton established that “methane and ethane were two separate compounds composed of a fixed ratio of 1:4 for carbon to hydrogen”. There are several problems with this passage: (1) the basis for the ratio, mass or atomic, is not specified; (2) methane and ethane do not give the same carbon-to-hydrogen ratio by any standard; and (3) Dalton did not predict a 1:4 carbon-to-hydrogen atomic ratio for methane or “carburetted hydrogen.” His formula was CH₂. One final example will exorcise my physical chemist’s penchant for pickiness. In several places, the author refers to the importance of the heat capacities of gases for providing information about molecular structure and motion. That connection is unquestionably true, but the numbers cited are not. Values of 1:3 and 1:4 are quoted for what appears to be the ratio of the heat capacity at constant pressure to the heat capacity at constant volume for diatomic molecules. Perhaps the intent was 1.3 and 1.4.

To be sure, errors such as these will not interfere with the ability of a non-expert reader to form a generally accurate picture of the development of physical chemistry. However, it is unfortunate to allow such carelessness to compromise an otherwise interesting and well-intentioned book. It is nicely illustrated with photographs and reproductions of engravings by Albrecht Dürer and others, and each of the 31 brief chapters is introduced by an epigraph. The illustrations and epigraphs are not all equally apt, but they dress up the book. All in all, this is a near miss. It will annoy many physical chemists, but that fact might recommend it to other readers.