JF Ptak Science Books St. Patrick's Day entry
We did a little decoration of the house today for our younger daughter, who as it turns out is very interested in St. Patrick's Day. So there were green pancakes, green milk, and a green pastry, surrounded by all of the green markers we could find in the house, plus cut-out shamrocks, and piles of books bound in green or with green dust jackets. As it turns out, there are not many green books--just eyeballing it says low single digit percentage.
The funny thing is that the green books are so interesting: for example, there's Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno; Stafford Artful Science; Schwillinger The Mathematical Basis of the Arts; Johnson's New Universal Cyclopedia, a Scientific and Popular Treasury of Useful Knowledge (in four massive volumes); The Working Classes of the United States (1867); Ed. Guerard Dictionnaire Encyclopedique d'Anecdotes; Bynum Dictionary of the History of Science; A Natural History of American Birds of Eastern North America; J.A. Symond The Renaissance in Italy (6 vols!); Holmes The Age of Justinian and Theodora; Jenks The History of Australasian Colonies; Hall Color and Meaning; The Works of E.A. Poe; and The Works of Charles Dickens.
The Dickens set is the so-called "Household Edition", which is shorter than you'd expect, the size of an old-standard paperback, but very nicely bound in a dark green linen that feels great in your hand. There's also the Collected Works of George Orwell, except those dust jackets are half green and half white, and it doesn't quite make it.
But the way I see it, this list of green books would make a Green Year Reading List and would really add up to something on day 365.
I saved the biggest green for last: The Physical Review. There were a few odd copies up here in the house (with R.P. Feynman contributions), but down in the warehouse there are easily two very large bookcases filled with them, a good green wall. The funny thing is that a younger sister publication, Review of Modern Physics, which is the same size and format as its older sister, is published with orange wrappers. And yet the two sit happily side-by-side...so far as I know.
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