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BARONS OF THE SKY

An earthbound account by Biddle (Coming to Terms, 1981) of the intrepid souls whose soaring aspirations helped launch a multinational aerospace industry. Biddle's attempt to combine institutional history with individual biography never quite gets off the ground, in large measure because of his insistence on portraying American aviation's pioneers as dependents of the government in general and the military in particular. At any rate, in this selectively detailed overview of US aeronautics from the Wright brothers' landmark flight through the early post-WW II era, the former New York Times correspondent singles out a handful of visionary aircraft makers and the corporations they created. Their ranks encompass the likes of Glenn Martin (an up-from- the-fairgrounds barnstormer), Jack Northrup (an intuitive technical genius with a flair for breakthrough designs), Donald Douglas (whose DC-3 was for many years the workhorse of the global village's skies), and Robert Gross (the East Coast investment banker who made a go, under the Lockheed banner, of the bankrupt business begun by the brothers Loughead). Also covered, albeit in cursory fashion, are such founding fathers as Boeing, Curtiss, and Grumman. In aid of his arguable premise that American aviation was ever an enterprise that could not survive, much less thrive, without substantive government support, Biddle goes out of his way to show how trailblazing airmen accepted, even solicited, federal patronage. At several points, he speculates portentously on the probable state of the aeronautics art, absent hot and cold wars. Ultimately, Biddle determines his subjects were neither merchants of death nor the paragons of technical progress depicted in their promotional literature. Unfortunately, that conclusion is lost in the shuffle of an accentuate-the-negative narrative that shortchanges at almost every turn aviation's avant-garde and its genuine contributions. (Twenty-four pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: June 28, 1991

ISBN: 0-671-66726-2

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1991

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A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING

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

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LETTERS FROM AN ASTROPHYSICIST

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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