As is appropriate for a book on quantum weirdness, this collection of sixteen chapters on quantum mechanics is a bit weird beyond the intention in the title. The e-book reviewed is published online, with each of the 16 chapters self-contained as a webpage, hyperlinked from the book home page. Is there no author bio—or did it tunnel out of the book?
It is almost too easy to miss the front matter (dedication and preface) and the end matter (epilogue, appendix, bibliography, and index). It is also easy to miss the dual form of the book, available in PDF format at the push of a web button on a chapter-by-chapter basis (and formatted more like a printed book). Somewhat like Schrödinger’s Cat, the references are in a numbered list at the end, but not referenced in the online version of the book. References span the range from Einstein’s 1935 paper to the 2016 discovery of gravitational waves.
The book is, by design, relatively light on math, with the author pointing out in the Epilogue several resources for the more mathematically inclined reader. (“Relatively light on math” for a quantum mechanics book still means integrals and quantum operators, just not so many that they overwhelm the textual portion of the chapter.) Instead of heavy math, the emphasis is on the strangeness of the quantum effects, with several paradoxes included.
A final duality and paradox arise concerning the audience for this book. Although the tone and layout lend themselves for an educational setting, the book lacks the problem set needed for use as a textbook.
Review by Bogdan Hoanca, University of Alaska Anchorage.
The opinions expressed in the book review section are those of the reviewer and do not necessarily reflect those of OPN or OSA.