In the original edition of his book, Purcell went no further than drawing these pictures and interpreting them qualitatively. But in his second edition he added an appendix in which he computes the radiation field quantitatively.

I've never understood why the Larmor formula isn't even mentioned in most introductory textbooks. In fact I never saw it in all of my undergraduate education. Yet it's simple to interpret, and it has all sorts of interesting uses. I've already mentioned antennas. You can also understand why the sky is blue and polarized, and explain why a classical Rutherford atom, with electrons orbiting around the nucleus, would be unstable, radiating away all its energy in a fraction of a nanosecond. More generally, the Larmor formula ties electromagnetic waves to their source, making it clear that radiation requires not just motion, but also acceleration of charged particles. Once you have the Larmor formula, why bother to cover Maxwell's equations?

Information provided by: http://physics.weber.edu