A behind-the-scenes history of American fighter pilots, from Vietnam to Desert Storm. Wilcox, a former air force information officer, believes that Vietnam was the forge that shaped the great air victory in the Gulf War. Profiting from the mistakes of Vietnam (due, in part, to the ineffective training of pilots in the 1960s), many veterans of that conflict became highly critical and innovative teachers. They challenged their young students to the utmost in long, brutal sessions of combat-simulated training; they developed new techniques of aerial warfare; they stressed a new level of professionalism in the service—and in the process they developed undoubtedly the best fighter pilots in the world. Wilcox interviewed many of the highest achievers, past and present, including the navy's ``Top Guns'' (he warns that the reality of being a Top Gun is far different from the image presented in the melodramatic movie of that name). To be successful, Wilcox asserts, a fighter pilot must learn to control fear, to live with it and fly with it, knowing that no margin of error is allowed in combat. The pilots he interviews are cool and self-assured, proud of being able to keep their emotions in check, loyal to each other, somewhat isolated from the outer world. They find unwinding difficult. They are, he says, a highly macho group: They face the possibility of sudden death every time they fly, and their ethos stresses courage, dedication, and performance above everything. Such dedication exacts a price: disrupted family lives, divorces, and a cramped lifestyle (military pilots earn far less than their commercial counterparts). A revealing study of the lives of an isolated, elite American warrior class. The book often reads like an oral history, and that is both a strength and a drawback: The narrative is frank and lively, but it lacks the objectivity and research notes one expects in a serious work of history. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-671-74793-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1997
Loads of good explaining, with reminders, time and again, of how much remains unknown, neatly putting the death of science...
Bryson (I'm a Stranger Here Myself, 1999, etc.), a man who knows how to track down an explanation and make it confess, asks the hard questions of science—e.g., how did things get to be the way they are?—and, when possible, provides answers.
As he once went about making English intelligible, Bryson now attempts the same with the great moments of science, both the ideas themselves and their genesis, to resounding success. Piqued by his own ignorance on these matters, he’s egged on even more so by the people who’ve figured out—or think they’ve figured out—such things as what is in the center of the Earth. So he goes exploring, in the library and in company with scientists at work today, to get a grip on a range of topics from subatomic particles to cosmology. The aim is to deliver reports on these subjects in terms anyone can understand, and for the most part, it works. The most difficult is the nonintuitive material—time as part of space, say, or proteins inventing themselves spontaneously, without direction—and the quantum leaps unusual minds have made: as J.B.S. Haldane once put it, “The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose.” Mostly, though, Bryson renders clear the evolution of continental drift, atomic structure, singularity, the extinction of the dinosaur, and a mighty host of other subjects in self-contained chapters that can be taken at a bite, rather than read wholesale. He delivers the human-interest angle on the scientists, and he keeps the reader laughing and willing to forge ahead, even over their heads: the human body, for instance, harboring enough energy “to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point.”
Loads of good explaining, with reminders, time and again, of how much remains unknown, neatly putting the death of science into perspective.Pub Date: May 6, 2003
ISBN: 0-7679-0817-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
BOOK TO SCREEN
A media-savvy scientist cleans out his desk.
Tyson (Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, 2017, etc.) receives a great deal of mail, and this slim volume collects his responses and other scraps of writing.
The prolific science commentator and bestselling author, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History, delivers few surprises and much admirable commentary. Readers may suspect that most of these letters date from the author’s earlier years when, a newly minted celebrity, he still thrilled that many of his audience were pouring out their hearts. Consequently, unlike more hardened colleagues, he sought to address their concerns. As years passed, suspecting that many had no interest in tapping his expertise or entering into an intelligent give and take, he undoubtedly made greater use of the waste basket. Tyson eschews pure fan letters, but many of these selections are full of compliments as a prelude to asking advice, pointing out mistakes, proclaiming opposing beliefs, or denouncing him. Readers will also encounter some earnest op-ed pieces and his eyewitness account of 9/11. “I consider myself emotionally strong,” he writes. “What I bore witness to, however, was especially upsetting, with indelible images of horror that will not soon leave my mind.” To crackpots, he gently repeats facts that almost everyone except crackpots accept. Those who have seen ghosts, dead relatives, and Bigfoot learn that eyewitness accounts are often unreliable. Tyson points out that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so confirmation that a light in the sky represents an alien spacecraft requires more than a photograph. Again and again he defends “science,” and his criteria—observation, repeatable experiments, honest discourse, peer review—are not controversial but will remain easy for zealots to dismiss. Among the instances of “hate mail” and “science deniers,” the author also discusses philosophy, parenting, and schooling.
A media-savvy scientist cleans out his desk.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-324-00331-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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