General readers can these days be expected to have some familiarity with personal computers, to know that both the phone company and their doctors have practical interest in fiber optics, to know that their being and health are written somehow into the structure of DNA molecules, that their tax dollars are paying for the construction of a supercollider, and that there is excitement in some quarters about the prospect of developing a room-temperature superconductor. All those developments hinge on quantum mechanics. The author has undertaken to write non-technically about how that quantum mechanical connection comes about. He gives his readers a surprisingly humdrum "that's the way it is" view of quantum mechanics, and conveys very little of "quantum mechanics as idea ", with its fascinating intellectual history and bedeviled still by some deep philosophical problems. (NW) Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or. Read Less