New York Dock Strike Entangles Physics Books in Web of Mystery

The New York dock strike has prevented valuable machinery from reaching desperate factories, kept exotic fruit from dying children, and tied up the nation's busiest port. It has also snarled up the arrival of over 50 textbooks for Physics 181 (Elementary Thermodynamics).

The instructor in the course is C.G.B. Garrett. British-born Garrett has been keeping what may best be described as a stiff upper lip concerning the big textbook lack in his course. "We're going ahead just as if we had the text," he says; "there's nothing else we can do."

The missing text book is Robert's "Heat and Thermodynamics." As Garrett says, "It's really the only book on the subject, so far as this course is concerned."

Unfortunately, the book is published in England and is very difficult to obtain in this country. A new edition came out last March, and in July Garrett ordered 80 copies of the text through the Phillips Book Store.

Phillips, however, was able to get its hands on only 12 copies. Consternation reigned in the Physics Department. Then the Harvard Cooperative Society stepped into the picture. "We'll get you the books," said the Coop.

That was over two months ago: The books have yet to arrive in Cambridge. The Coop has informed Garrett that the New York dock strike is holding up the valuable tomes, and that there is no immediate chance of delivery.

Not the Only One

Meanwhile Physics 181 marches on, just as if there had never been such people as Mike Curran or such organizations as the Longshoreman's Union. Students in the course either get the text out of the University libraries or share it with other men who have managed to get possession of a copy.

A similar book lack appeared in History 150b--The History of Germany Since 1848--during the last few weeks when one of the assigned texts was discovered to be out of print.