Cassidy D.C. A short history of physics in the American century

Harvard University Press, 2011. - 211 pp.
As the twentieth century ended, computers, the Internet, and nanotechnology were central to modern American life. Yet the physical advances underlying these applications are poorly understood and underappreciated by U.S. citizens. In this overview, Cassidy views physics through America’s engagement with the political events of a tumultuous century. During the twentieth century, American physics followed an arching trajectory that extended from relatively humble beginnings in 1900 to a place on the world stage by the early 1930s, to a place of preeminence by the 1950s, and finally by the end of the century to a more modest place as an internationalized discipline within a global community of competitors. This is a book about that trajectory: the people, the discoveries, the institutions. It includes both the well-known and the less well-known physicists and institutions, as well as often neglected minority participants. Nevertheless, this book is intended only as a very brief introductory synthesis of the history of twentieth-century American physics for students and the general public.Entering the New Century.
American Physics Comes of Age.
Surviving the Depression.
The Physicists’ War.
Taming the Endless Frontier.
The New Physics.
Sputnik: Action and Reaction.
Revising the Partnership.