McGraw-Hill Concise Encyclopedia of Science & Technology (Hardcover)

~ McGraw-Hill (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Hundreds of engineers and scientists contributed to the alphabetically arranged 7,800 short articles including 19 Noble Prize Winners." (Chemical Engineering Progress )

Product Description

This definitive reference offers you concise, authoritative, and up-to-date coverage of every major field of science and technology. In articles authored by scientists and engineers at the forefront of their fields (including 19 Nobel Prize winners), and written to be accessible to the general reader as well as the scientific user, this newly revised volume covers 75 major fields of science and engineering, including current and critical advances in fast-developing fields such as virology, genetics, computer science, and oceanography. Richly illustrated, it also features biographical sketches of the world's top scientists, a superb index, cross references, and bibliographies. No other reference offers scientists, researchers, students, and the interested public such definitive and inclusive coverage of science and technology in a single volume.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 2450 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Professional; 4 edition (May 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0070526591
• ISBN-13: 978-0070526594
• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 9 x 3.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #923,420 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great deal of info, poorly organized, wrong proportions, October 30, 1998

By	J. McCranie (Brunswick, GA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book contains an enormous amount of information. However, there are two major problems. 1. It is often hard to find what you are looking for if you aren't using the same terminology they are. For instance, I looked for "Carbon dating", and it isn't listed - either in the text or the index. It is under "radiocarbon dating". There is no "carbon dating - see radiocarbon dating". I looked for "thermal radiation" and it wasn't there. It was under "heat radiation", again with no "see ...". In fact, there are no "see ..." in the text to point you to the right title. 2. The book claims that the material is given space according to its importance. "Atomic energy" gets 6 lines (2 sentences). I flipped to a random page, and "black pepper" gets more than twice as many lines, and "blackberry" gets 3 times as many lines.
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Well, the above was my original review of my 4th edition, which I wrote after having the book about a week. Now I find that the index is indeed good, I'm just not used to looking in an index rather in the body of the book.
Even the longer "Nuclear power" article is only a little longer than "blackberry". There is very little on evolution. Having seen the full 20-30 volume set at the library, this one-volume "concise" version misses a lot that is in the full set, and I'm not convinced that the abridged versions of the articles are as complete as they should be. But overall, I like it a little better than I did initially. I'll give it a 4.5.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fair's Fair, January 21, 2000

By A Customer

The comment in the previous review about thermal radiation and heat radiation is fair enough, but I feel the reviewer is being unfair in other respects. The reason why there is no "See.." in the main text is because there is a very good index at the back! For instance under Carbon in the index, there is a page reference to radiocarbon dating. OK, there is no mention of carbon dating, so you would have to see radiocarbon dating, but you only have to scan a few lines of the index under the main entry on Carbon to find it. The comment about atomic energy is (unintentionally) misleading. Sure, the entry on atomic energy is very short, but there is a fair-sized entry on nuclear power and there is a cross-reference from atomic energy. Although the entry on nuclear energy is rather shorter than the two entries on oil and gas exploitation (a more relevant comparision than black pepper), it is backed up another fair-sized entry on nuclear reactors. I do think McGraw-Hill have made a decent effort to create an affordable science encyclopedia. (This refers to the 3rd edition, but I imagine the 4th edition is very similar).