Exploring the Secrets of the Aurora

• Search for the Unknown Quantity in the Solar Wind.- Confronting Paradigms: Aurora Research During the Early Space Age.- Realizing the Dream of Our Pioneers: Polar Magnetic Substorms and the Associated Current System.- Is the Earth’s Dipole Really Offcentered and Inclined?: Planetary Magnetic Fields.- Myth of the Emerging Flux Tubes: Sunspots and Solar Flares.- Synthesis of the Four Major Disciplines: Predicting Geomagnetic Storms As A Space Weather Project.- Beyond the Inner Heliosphere: The Magnetic Field Structure of the Outer Heliosphere: A Three-Dimensional Model.

"Besides space physicists, the book will be interesting to historians and sociologists of science. Historians, because it is a history of an important era of space physics seen from the inside. Sociologists, because Akasofu has strong opinions about the interactions among scientists. Finally, this is a collector's book. It has a handsome binding with a nice picture of an aurora on the cover. It is unique in its mix of science, history, philosophy and exhortation. It is the kind of book that will still beguile a tug off the library shelf 100 years from now." (EOS, 84:41 (October 2003)