Jennifer Coopersmith took her PhD in nuclear physics from the University of London, and was later a research fellow at TRIUMF, University of British Columbia. She was for many years an associate lecturer for the Open University (London and Oxford) honing her skills at answering those "damn-fool profound and difficult questions" that students ask. She currently does similar work on astrophysics courses for Swinburne University in Melbourne.

• 1. Introduction: Feynman's blocks ; 2. Perpetual motion is prohibited ; 3. Vis viva: the fist 'block' of energy ; 4. Heat: seventeenth century ; 5. Heat in the eighteenth century ; 6. The discovery of latent and specific heats ; 7. A hundred and one years of mechanics: Newton to Lagrange via Daniel Bernoulli ; 8. A tale of two countries: the rise of the steam engine and the caloric theory of heat ; 9. Rumford, Davy and Young ; 10. Naked heat: the gas laws and the specific heat of gases ; 11. Two contrasting characters: Fourier and Herapath ; 12. Sadi Carnot ; 13. Hamilton and Green ; 14. The mechanical equivalent of heat: Mayer, Joule and Waterston ; 15. Faraday and Helmholtz ; 16. The laws of thermodynamics: Thomson and Clausius ; 17. A forward look: Maxwell, Boltzmann, Planck, Schrodinger and Einstein ; 18. Impossible things; difficult things ; 19. Conclusions

I am pleased to heartily recommend Coopersmiths readable, enjoyable, and largely nonmathematical yet profound account of the development of an important physical conceptenergy. With a vein of humor running throughout, it deals with an enormous compass of important topics seldom found elsewhere at this level. It should be of great interest and utility to students, both undergraduate and graduate, historians of science, and anyone interested in the concepts of energy and their evolution through time.