Jammer (p. ix) describes his book as follows: ‘‘This monograph presents a
comprehensive, coherent, critical, and completely documented analysis of the conceptual
development of the notion of simultaneity from its earliest use in remote antiquity until its
present status in modern physics.’’ The critical analysis may perhaps be the weakest part of
the book; more of it would have been welcome and, as will be seen below, I do not always
agree with what there is. One of the most valuable features of the book is the extensive
documentation; I suspect even many experts in the field will find new references here.
Although there may be little that is added to the scholarship of the subject as a whole, the
sweep of the book is so wide that there are probably few individuals that will not find some
things that are new to them. Jammer does not say what audience he had in mind while
writing the book, but it seems to me it could profitably be read by graduate students or
anyone else with an interest in the subject. The greatest mathematical demands are in a
brief section on general relativity, where familiarity with some aspects of tensor calculus is
assumed. (There are some problems with Jammer’s treatment here, however; see Section 4,
below.) Most of the book is much less mathematical, though.