An expert’s comprehensive, sobering investigation.
Career energy-reporter Maize scours decades of American nuclear policy and finds enough harebrained schemes to fill up an entire field of defunct missile silos.
In 1945, the terrible power of the atom was unleashed, evidenced by the charred, twisted bodies that littered the ruins of Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even so, some of Uncle Sam’s finest scientific minds couldn’t help but wonder what other miracles the mighty atom might next achieve. Among the many ideas pursued by these scientists—and supported by their political patrons—were attempts to strap nuclear reactors onto the wings of airplanes, resurfacing the face of the Earth with atomic blasts and shooting astronauts into deep space via atomic-powered flatulence. In fact, according to the author, the boys from the lab grew so cocky after the success of the A-bomb that they seemed to have more in common with fictional boy-genius Tom Swift than any rational flesh-and-blood adult charged with making important policy decisions. Maize recounts the dizzying heights of this group’s collective hubris in dense but sobering detail. Not much of the United States’ more than 60 years of atomic history appears to escape his scrutiny or expertise, whether scientific or political. Sadly, this book may not find a large audience among general readers because much of the material is accessible to only the most informed energy specialists. However, the author’s catalogue of the wrongheaded notions involved in formulating U.S. energy policy to date is crucial knowledge for those tasked with forming American energy policy in the future. As the author poignantly demonstrates, U.S. scientists and policymakers still don’t know what to do with the mounds of nuclear waste piling up around the nation’s remaining nuclear power stations. Despite all this, he warns, the love affair with the atom persists.
An expert’s comprehensive, sobering investigation.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2012
ISBN: 978-1466420526
Page Count: 258
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Gibbins combines historical knowledge with a sense of adventure, making this book a highly enjoyable package.
A popular novelist turns his hand to historical writing, focusing on what shipwrecks can tell us.
There’s something inherently romantic about shipwrecks: the mystery, the drama of disaster, the prospect of lost treasure. Gibbins, who’s found acclaim as an author of historical fiction, has long been fascinated with them, and his expertise in both archaeology and diving provides a tone of solid authority to his latest book. The author has personally dived on more than half the wrecks discussed in the book; for the other cases, he draws on historical records and accounts. “Wrecks offer special access to history at all…levels,” he writes. “Unlike many archaeological sites, a wreck represents a single event in which most of the objects were in use at that time and can often be closely dated. What might seem hazy in other evidence can be sharply defined, pointing the way to fresh insights.” Gibbins covers a wide variety of cases, including wrecks dating from classical times; a ship torpedoed during World War II; a Viking longship; a ship of Arab origin that foundered in Indonesian waters in the ninth century; the Mary Rose, the flagship of the navy of Henry VIII; and an Arctic exploring vessel, the Terror (for more on that ship, read Paul Watson’s Ice Ghost). Underwater excavation often produces valuable artifacts, but Gibbins is equally interested in the material that reveals the society of the time. He does an excellent job of placing each wreck within a broader context, as well as examining the human elements of the story. The result is a book that will appeal to readers with an interest in maritime history and who would enjoy a different, and enlightening, perspective.
Gibbins combines historical knowledge with a sense of adventure, making this book a highly enjoyable package.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781250325372
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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