Book Review

What is your relationship with the uniaxial optic axis interference figure?Maybe optical mineralogy was your favorite undergraduate class, and you can sketch the directions for O-ray and E-ray vibrations to this very day.Or maybe interference figures were the bane of your undergraduate education, and you still cringe when you think about them.Or perhaps you've never taken a course in optical mineralogy, and you have no idea what a uniaxial optic axis interference figure is.(No problem-there is an app(endix) for that!)Or maybe you are like me and know all about calcite and its high birefringence and distinct interference figure, but you have no idea that calcite played a role in the outcome of World War II.But why not calcite?Why not use the interference figure, with its brightly colored concentric rings, as a gunsight on military artillery?Just put the melatope on the target and pull the trigger.In reality, it is a bit more complicated than that, but you get the picture.Rings of Fire, by Larry J. Hughes, geophysicist and artist, takes us on a World War II adventure like no other-one in which optical mineralogy plays the hero.Rings of Fire chronicles the Optical Ring Sight (ORS) program from 1941 through 1945, pioneered by Edwin Land and Polaroid Corp. and funded by the U.S. Department of War.The story winds its way from Edwin Land's invention in New England through calcite mines in California, Montana, and Mexico.The myriad twists and turns that ensue, often funny and sometimes heart-wrenching, obtain their richness through the people and the unique challenges faced by the ORS program.During WWII, inventors and businessmen like Edwin Land and geologists like