A Dialogue on Chemically Induced Nuclear Effects: A Guide for the Perplexed About Cold Fusion, by Nate Hoffman
Reviewed by Dieter Britz

This is based on work done under the auspices of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and written by a researcher from Rockwell International. The latter institution gets a fair amount of mention, as a result. The book is written in the style of a dialogue between YS, a young, sometimes brash and mostly tough and skeptical but very well informed Scientist, with OM, the older and more thoughtful metallurgist; a device taken from the well known book by Hume-Rothery. It works quite well, allowing issues to be looked at from several sides. The book is reasonable in tone and definite conclusions are left to the reader to draw. One of the book's strengths is the emphasis on artifacts - both those that lead to apparent evidence for "cold fusion", and those that tend to suppress such evidence. A wide range of technical problems is gone through in remarkable detail. There are also reprints of some valuable lab reports that are otherwise difficult to access.