Benjamin Thompson (later Count Rumford) aimed by his inventions and scientific research to increase the degree of comfort in daily life. His goals were practical and his contributions to our knowledge of the nature of heat proved extremely valuable. Between 1870 and 1875, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston published all of Rumford's papers that the Academy committee was able to find. The Academy edition, however, has long been out of print and practically unavailable. Here Sanborn Brown has rearranged the papers according to subject matter.

Volume I contains Rumford's papers on the nature of heat; the second covers its practical applications. This third volume contains his papers on devices and techniques, including “Use of Steam for Transporting Heat”; “Means of Heating the Hall of the (French) Institute”; “New Boiler for Saving Fuel”; “Steam Heat for Making Soap”; “Fires in Closed Fire-Places”; “Kitchen Fire-Places”; “Salubrity of Warm Rooms”; “Salubrity of Warm Bathing”; “The Strength of Silk”; “Quantities of Absorbed Moisture”; “Advantage of Wheels with Broad Felloes”; and “Proposals for Building a Frigate.”

Because of its location, volume, speed, and propensity for severe flooding, the Rhône, France’s most powerful river, has long influenced the economy, politics, and transportation networks of Europe. Humans have tried to control the Rhône for over two thousand years, but large-scale development did not occur until the twentieth century. The Rhône valley has undergone especially dramatic changes since World War II. Hydroelectric plants, nuclear reactors, and industrialized agriculture radically altered the river, as they simultaneously fueled both the physical and symbolic reconstruction of France.

In Confluence, Sara B. Pritchard traces the Rhône’s remaking since 1945. She interweaves this story with an analysis of how state officials, technical elites, and citizens connected the environment and technology to political identities and state-building. In the process, Pritchard illuminates the relationship between nature and nation in France.

Pritchard’s innovative integration of science and technology studies, environmental history, and the political history of modern France makes a powerful case for envirotechnical analysis: an approach that highlights the material and rhetorical links between ecological and technological systems. Her groundbreaking book demonstrates the importance of environmental management and technological development to culture and politics in the twentieth century. As Pritchard shows, reconstructing the Rhône remade France itself.

Cycles of Invention and Discovery offers an in-depth look at the real-world practice of science and engineering. It shows how the standard categories of “basic” and “applied” have become a hindrance to the organization of the U.S. science and technology enterprise. Tracing the history of these problematic categories, Venkatesh Narayanamurti and Toluwalogo Odumosu document how historical views of policy makers and scientists have led to the construction of science as a pure ideal on the one hand and of engineering as a practical (and inherently less prestigious) activity on the other. Even today, this erroneous but still widespread distinction forces these two endeavors into separate silos, misdirects billions of dollars, and thwarts progress in science and engineering research.

The authors contrast this outmoded perspective with the lived experiences of researchers at major research laboratories. Using such Nobel Prize–winning examples as magnetic resonance imaging, the transistor, and the laser, they explore the daily micro-practices of research, showing how distinctions between the search for knowledge and creative problem solving break down when one pays attention to the ways in which pathbreaking research actually happens. By studying key contemporary research institutions, the authors highlight the importance of integrated research practices, contrasting these with models of research in the classic but still-influential report Science the Endless Frontier. Narayanamurti and Odumosu’s new model of the research ecosystem underscores that discovery and invention are often two sides of the same coin that moves innovation forward.