Aant Elzinga, Einstein's Nobel Prize: A Glimpse behind Closed Doors. Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications/USA, 2006. Pp xii+128. ISBN 0-88135-283-7. $39.95 (hardback) (original) (raw)

why (as they concede in passing) some countries deviated from the main trends. Looking at such cases in detail would have allowed them to infer the causes of the main trends. By failing to descend from the analysis of statistical changes at the global level to develop a more fine-grained analysis-for instance, looking at the peculiarities of national higher education systems, at major curricular changes in individual universities or at institutional histories of disciplines-they cannot get at the most tangible evidence for the factors which immediately influence human action. The secondary literatures on these lower levels certainly exist ; the authors just do not make use of them. In short, we desperately need good books on the transformation of the university in the twentieth century, but this is not one of them.