Featuring excellent characterization and exquisite detail concerning a theater of the war (Norway) not well-mined, this will...
An exciting, thorough account of how Norwegian resistance, with help from the British, scuttled Nazi attempts to build an atomic program.
The steady focus of this suspenseful work of research by accomplished nonfiction author Bascomb (The New Cool: A Visionary Teacher, His FIRST Robotics Team, and the Ultimate Battle of Smarts, 2011, etc.) is Vemork, a Norwegian hydroelectric plant on the Mana River. The author weaves together several strands regarding this top-secret 1943 Norwegian-British mission to dismantle the part of the Vemork power station that was producing heavy water, a severely condensed substance that the Nazi physicists were beginning to understand might help lead to the production of an atomic bomb. Soon after the invasion of Norway by the Nazis in April 1940, Norwegian scientist and professor of atomic chemistry Leif Tronstad, a fervent patriot, caught on to the Germans’ sudden interest in increasing the production of heavy water. Working through the British Secret Intelligence Service, Tronstad was able to direct the commando operation on Vemork from the safe resistance headquarters in London. Bascomb’s intricate story involves two teams of commandos organized under Britain’s Special Operations Executive, both of which dropped into Norway in late 1942: the Grouse team, led by Jens-Anton Poulsson, would act as the advance unit, carrying radios and support, and the Gunnerside team of saboteurs, led by Joachim Rønneberg, would infiltrate the plant at night and perform the delicate demolition before escaping on skis through the snowy valley. Bascomb carefully examines the significance of the plant in the entire scheme of Allied victory as well as the perilous fates of the men and their families. Ultimately, he asks, “if the Germans had fashioned a self-sustaining reactor with heavy water, what then?”
Featuring excellent characterization and exquisite detail concerning a theater of the war (Norway) not well-mined, this will make a terrific addition to World War II collections.Pub Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-544-36805-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
An itinerant campus speaker reports back from interviews at more than 100 schools, arguing that students are not ``simply greedy or indifferent,'' as popular images suggest. Loeb (Nuclear Culture, 1982, etc.) covers a lot of ground, mixing report and essay. He begins by analyzing campus apathy: He meets apolitical students who prize individualism, call activists self-serving, fear downward mobility, lack historical perspective on the 1960s, and think their classroom life disengaged from reality. Loeb, a longtime activist himself, doesn't damn them but suggests that our larger culture encourages political complacency. He goes on, however, to explore activism, focusing on situations, not individuals. Some examples: ``Greeks for Peace'' at the University of Michigan, divestment efforts at Columbia, a tuition protest at the City University of New York. All of these efforts were launched by students inspired by a variety of stimuli: family, teachers, campus comrades, or a reaction to ``America's increasingly visible crises.'' Loeb concludes that this is a generation with a ``contingent'' future, in which small but growing numbers are trying to work for a better society. His own observations are generally astute, recognizing that today's black campus separatism has its historical precedent in the 1960s, criticizing PC-baiters but also acknowledging that identity politics privileges race and sex over class. However, he covers his ambitious topic broadly rather than deeply, failing to elucidate campus tensions over race and sex or to say much about curriculum reform—though he does observe trenchantly that the political activists he met were largely untouched by much-derided theories like deconstructionism and postmodernism. Better on big pictures than case studies, but a worthy response to Illiberal Education and other portrayals of campus life today. (First serial to Vogue, New Age, Sierra, Mother Jones; author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 17, 1994
ISBN: 0-8135-2144-0
Page Count: 510
Publisher: Rutgers Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
Quinn, fresh from his exploration of early America in A New World ( p. 535), takes on the early days of gold-rush California through the story of two men whose political and personal rivalry was to end in tragedy. William Gwin was a suave Southerner with a handsome fortune who headed a clique of California Southerners known as the ``Chivalry.'' Quinn amusingly shows how Gwin—determined to get his version of a state constitution through the first state assembly at Monterey and himself elected to the US Senate—had to adapt to the rough democratic manners of California politics. He ceded first place for a while to the coon-skinned frontiersman ``Dr.'' Semple, but nevertheless controlled the assembly from a back seat. David Broderick, on the other hand, could not have been more different: a tough street fighter from the slums of New York determined to lead ``the ignorant and the timid'' against their masters in 1849 San Francisco. While Gwin carefully cultivated his image in political circles, even going so far as to agree to the ban on slavery (while still owning slaves himself back home), rival Broderick joined the firemen of the nascent city and quickly conceived a virulent hatred for the patrician Gwin. For Broderick, as Quinn quips, it was simple: ``Let the Chivalry oppose the Shovelry at its peril.'' The end result was a duel between the two resulting in Broderick's death. Quinn paints an absorbing picture of this strange, hurly-burly society, at once primitive and sophisticated, impoverished and unimaginably wealthy. We see the tent city of San Francisco with its ruthless merchants, Australian street gangs, and its harbor teeming with mastless boats whose crews had run off to join the gold rush. We see the beginnings of modern California—a melting pot of American problems and aspirations. Quinn performs his task in a richly straightforward way, depicting his colorful cast with a keen sense of the delicate meshing of the personal and the historical.
Pub Date: Oct. 19, 1994
ISBN: 0-517-59573-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
