POLYMER LETTERS EDITION 621

thus a valuable addition to any collection on thermal analysis. Anyone in- terested in carrying out the experiment of comparison of thermal analysis in different areas may want to have the book on his shelf.

One shortcoming to people interested in the conference as such is the omission of the discussions which must have been the main result of the meeting.

B. Wunderlich

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Troy, New York

Received June 11, 1975

Thermally Stimulated Discharge of Polymer Electrets, I. van Turhout, Elsevier, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1975, 335 pp. $38.50.

This is an extremely detailed treatment of those electrical properties of se- lected polymeric materials other than ohmic conduction (conduction in a ma- terial obeying local electrical neutrality and supplied with barrier-free elec- trodes). Although the principal emphasis is on electret behavior (an electret is a nonferroelectric material in which an electric moment can be induced by an external field and maintained for substantial time periods, upwards of months depending on temperature, after the inducing field is removed) and more specifically on electret action derived from permanent molecular dipole orientation, there is also ample treatment of other dielectric and quasi-dielec- tric phenomena. These include induced localized polarization (induced molec- ular dipoles), polarization derived from electrode barriers and interfacial bar- riers in inhomogeneous materials (persistent internal polarization and inter- facial polarization), and space charge conduction also derived from electrode and internal barriers. The major stated emphasis is on the molecular origin of the thermally stimulated decay (TSD) of orientational dipole electrets and the application of this measuring technique over a wide temperature range to the study of molecular motion in polymers, and also less directly to conduction processes in polymers.

The book is divided into a “theoretical” part, which embraces much back- ground material from the theoretical and experimental literature as well as the author’s own contributions to dielectric analysis, and an “experimental” part which comprises mainly a detailed description of the author’s own experimen- tal research. The principal result of the latter part appears to be that mobile space charge plays a significant role in the discharge kinetics. No microscopic (molecular) models for this are offered, however.

628 POLYMER LETTERS EDITION

The book has the following weaknesses. First, it appears to be a verbatim reproduction of the author’s Ph.D. dissertation to the University of Leiden (December 1972) and it suffers from the more common disadvantages of such a work. For example, there is undue stress on the author’s own experimental work, although it is interesting in its own right. Also, the background mater- ial is excessive for the amount of material contained in the experimental part. Much of the former would normally be relegated to literature references in the normal publication of a dissertation. In short, the book could have been sub- stantially improved if the dissertation, impressive for its completeness by any standards, had been edited to conform to the needs of the normal reader. Spe- cifically, the author’s own work could have been woven into the fabric of a less personal development. Second, as the dissertation appeared in late 1972, there are no literature references more recent than this. A three-year delay in the appearance of a book which is an (apparently) unedited reproduction of a dissertation is really unnecessary and detracts from the currency of the book. Third, some of the more important basic references in this field have been ne- glected. Two cases come immediately to mind: von Hippel’s two-volume ser- ies on dielectrics published in the fifties, and the work of Kallmann and others on the electret effects they have called Persistent Internal Polarization. Much of the phenomenology developed here can be found in this literature and ref- erence to it would have been useful to the reader. Fourth, and unfortunately very important, the price of $38.50 is an outrage. Technical books of this length that have been much better edited and organized, both time-consuming and expensive efforts, are currently selling for as little as half this price.

Despite these disadvantages, this book does contain substantial useful mater- ial, especially of an analytical character applied to the electrical properties of insulators with complicated dielectric and conduction properties, supplied with nonohmic electrodes. The book is strongly recommended to this audience.

Peter Mark

Dept. of Electrical Engineering Princeton University Princeton, New Jersey 08540

Received July 21, 1975

Man-Made Fibres, 6th ed., R-W. Moncrieff, Halstead Press, New York, New York, 1975. $37.50.

The sixth edition of “Man-Made Fibres” follows the previous formats of its predecessors. The seven chapters of Part I deal with the structure and proper- ties of fibres. This new edition has added in chapter 1 a brief discussion of instron testers and determination of moisture content. The next eleven chap-