Oh, but I love this book.

No other book that Asimov has written has been so spectacularly cashiered by the progress of time as has this one. Slide rules are no longer the ubiquitous companion of the scientist and engineer, the vast industry devoted to designing, manufacturing, and maintaining them has vanished. In fact, I don’t even think you can buy them anymore.

And, of course, it’s rather ironic that the man who predicted the rise of the electronic calculator in "The Feeling of Power" should be caught so flat-footed, as Asimov himself appreciated.

Now I, as it happens, do own a slide rule. Two of them, in fact. I even learned how to use them in school, the year before calculator prices dropped so substantially that pretty much everybody bought one. I even continued to use them in the years afterwards, such as when my calculator was in the shop for repairs. (Now, of course, I have so many calculators that this isn’t likely to happen.)

(I also own an abacus, know how to use it, and do, in fact, use it on rare occasions just for the heck of it.)

So, as with Quick and Easy Math, I don’t find the book entirely obsolete, because I sometimes like to do things the old-fashioned way.

And the book is well-written, clear, helps one understand how and why slide rules work—by explaining how logarithms work. Of course, Asimov covers logarithms elsewhere in his opera, so there’s no need to buy the book for that.

On the other hand, given how badly out-of-date it is, it’s a hoot to read. Just quoting from the introductory section: “We might wish that we ourselves owned such a computer to do the work for us. Such a situation would have its disadvantages, however. Electronic computers are bulky, expensive, complicated, and can be handled only by people with special training.…A slide rule doesn’t seem as impressive as a giant electronic computer, but it has many advantages. It is small enough to put in your pocket, it need not cost more than a couple of dollars, it can’t go out of order, and, best of all, it can solve almost any numerical problem that you meet up with under ordinary circumstances. To add to all that, it is simple to operate…”

The book is worthwhile if for nothing else to evoke a nostalgic fondness for those earlier days.

And, of course, the fact that I found the copy I bought in the science fiction section of the Deseret Book store in downtown Salt Lake City also endears it to me. Granted, booksellers tend to think everything by Asimov is sf and stock shelves accordingly, but, really…