A welcome addition to the literature of the atomic age.
A well considered portrait of the scientists who made the atomic bomb and then repented ever after.
Although thousands of scientists and support staff contributed to the development of the Trinity bomb and its cousins, writes VanDeMark (History/US Naval Academy), nine “contributed centrally to the bomb’s creation” and just as quickly raised objections, on a variety of grounds, to its employment. These scientists, VanDeMark suggests, can be forgiven—if forgiveness is desired—for their initial enthusiasm for the work: after all, caught up in “the frenzy of creation,” they were just doing what scientists do, pursuing knowledge for its own sake; one of them, Edward Teller, argued, “As a scientist, it is my responsibility to make things that will work. How they’re used is not my responsibility.” However, many of Teller’s colleagues disagreed even before the bomb was deployed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some, like Leo Szilard, argued that it should not be used at all, for to do so would “open the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale”; others, like Robert Oppenheimer, maintained that it should be used only at night, when it would light up the night sky and force an immediate surrender in its awful glow. (VanDeMark reveals that the military elected a daylight raid to protect the bomber crews from danger, even if it removed the shock-and-awe element.) Though less well written than Richard Rhodes’s Making of the Atomic Bomb, VanDeMark’s study does a good job of exploring the culture of science, especially the science involved in making weapons and the moral dilemmas such work occasions. As if to validate its subjects’ fears, this closes with a dark warning that the continuing spread of nuclear weapons today puts the lie to previous assurances that the doctrine of deterrence “can work everywhere and forever.”
A welcome addition to the literature of the atomic age.Pub Date: June 2, 2003
ISBN: 0-316-73833-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For the author’s fans.
A Fox News journalist and talk show host sets out to prove that she is not “an empty St. John suit in five-inch stiletto heels.”
The child of devout Christians, Minnesota native Carlson’s first love was music. She began playing violin at age 6 and quickly revealed that she was not only a prodigy, but also a little girl who thrived on pleasing audiences. Working with top teachers, she developed her art over the years. But by 16, Carlson began “chafing at [the] rigid, structured life” of a concert violinist–in-training and temporarily put music aside. At the urging of her mother, the high achiever set her sights on winning the Miss T.E.E.N. pageant, where she was first runner-up. College life at Stanford became yet another quest for perfection that led Carlson to admit it was “not attainable” after she earned a C in one class. At the end of her junior year and again at the urging of her mother, Carlson entered the 1989 Miss America pageant, which she would go on to win thanks to a brilliant violin performance. Dubbed the “smart Miss America,” Carlson struggled with pageant stereotypes as well as public perceptions of who she was. Being in the media spotlight every day during her reign, however, also helped her decide on a career in broadcast journalism. Yet success did not come easily. Sexual harassment dogged her, and many expressed skepticism about her abilities due to her pageant past. Even after she rose to national prominence, first as a CBS news broadcaster and then as a Fox talk show host, Carlson continued—and continues—to be labeled as “dumb or a bimbo.” Her history clearly demonstrates that she is neither. However, Carlson’s overly earnest tone, combined with her desire to show her Minnesota “niceness…in action,” as well as the existence of “abundant brain cells,” dampens the book’s impact.
For the author’s fans.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-42745-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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