N. D. Papaleksi, Radio Interference and Methods of Combating It. Second edition. State Publishing House of Technical-Theoretical Literature, Moscow—Leningrad, 1944, 103 pp., price 5 rubles.

The book by Academician N. D. Papaleksi—one of the largest representatives of Soviet radio engineering—sets itself the successful attempt to present popularly the question of the nature of radio interference and the necessity

methods of combating them, and also to acquaint the reader with modern methods of this struggle.

The author divides interference into groups and separately examines methods of combating each of the types of interference (industrial, atmospheric, passive, artificial), at the same time giving an assessment of the practical significance of the given type of interference. In doing so, the role of interference under amplitude modulation is considered.

In the concluding chapter, the author acquaints the reader with the idea of frequency modulation and with those advantages that are inherent in this method of communication with respect to combating interference.

The book is read with great interest, contains a number of very aptly selected numerical data and fully answers its purpose, giving a very clear and sufficiently complete (for a popular book) survey of the question.

The only shortcoming of the book is the excessive elementary character of the opening paragraphs, which do not fit with the subsequent exposition. In fact, on p. 11 the author defines the concepts “period,” “frequency,” and “resonance,” while on the following pages there are such difficult things (fading, the Luxembourg–Gorky effect, synchronous communication, etc.), the understanding of which already requires a certain qualification. Therefore the first pages of the book could have been considerably shortened without detriment to its content.

On the whole, Academician Papaleksi’s book is very successful; reading it will be of benefit not only to communications workers of average qualification (evidently, the book was intended precisely for this group of readers), but also to more qualified radio physicists and radio engineers.

The publishing house ought to expand the practice of enlisting leading scientists of the Union in the creation of a broad series of high-quality popular books.

The design of the book—in particular, the quality of the illustrations and paper—leaves something to be desired.

N. N. Malov