Category Archives: Reviews

Now it Can be Told

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now-it-can-be-toldThis book was written, as stated on the cover page, By Leslie R. Groves, Lieutenant General, U.S. Army, Retired. I’ve read several books about the Manhattan Project, and I would put this on at the top of the list to someone who has just developed an interest in the subject. It describes in no uncertain terms the complexity and difficulty of what was being sought and the remarkable achievements that resulted. To General Groves’ credit, he dedicates the book, “To the men and women of the Manhattan Project, and to all those who aided them in their yet unparalleled accomplishment.” I was impressed by the number of times Groves wrote about something going wrong because of something he had done. He shied away from blaming others for problems and gave credit to those who suggested some insight or approach that he had not considered.  My “personal review” of the book that I prepared for use in a new book I’m researching about the history of the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant covers twenty-three pages. I promise to impose a much shorter version in this review.

Groves was in charge constructing the Pentagon when he was told he had been selected by the Secretary of War for an important project, and that his selection had been approved by President Roosevelt. I was surprised that Groves knew about what he called “…the atomic development program…,” and responded unenthusiastically, “Oh, that thing.” He met with his commanding General who told him, “The basic research and development are done. You just have to take the rough designs, put them in final shape, build some plants and organize an operating force and your job will be finished and the war will be over.” Groves admits in his book that it took weeks before he had a comprehension of, “…how overoptimistic an outlook he had presented.”

Groves describes the research by physicists that led some to conclude an atomic bomb was possible. Lise Meitner explained to Otto Hahn that the results of his research in Germany indicated the uranium atom could be split and that the resulting fission (a term developed by Meitner and her nephew) would release enormous amounts of energy. The genesis of the Manhattan Project was initiated by scientists Hitler drove out of Germany. Many came to America, and they feared what would happen if the Germans were the first to develop the bomb. One of the problems they faced was that the “…American-born scientists, in the main, did not have so acute and appreciation of the danger…” The process that resulted in Franklin Roosevelt approving research is described in numerous sources, but the Groves account is, in my estimation, adequately complete and to the point. Continue reading →

Biology is Undeniably Fascinating

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UndeniableBill Nye recently participated in a controversial debate with young-Earth creationist Ken Ham. In his new book, Undeniable, Nye writes “For those readers who might be deeply religious, welcome… I did not disparage anyone’s religion.” He notes that “many people… see no conflict between their spiritual beliefs and their scientific understanding of evolution.” This fact always makes me wonder how individuals can be so sure they speak for God. When someone makes an assertion in science, scrutiny across the world and over time weeds out falsehoods. Similarly, in religions wisdom accumulates over time. Why some individuals cling to the past puzzles me.

Nye writes that “evolution is one of the most powerful and important ideas ever developed in the history of science,” with “essential practical applications.” He fears that if the “pseudoscience of creationism” makes inroads into education, it “is an assault not just on evolution but on the whole public understanding of science.”

Nye refutes creationism. For example, Ham claims that 7,000 kinds of animals were on Noah’s ark – there are 16 million species known today, so eleven new species would have come into existence every day under Ham’s vision of the Great Flood to reach today’s total. Surely someone would have noticed if that happened. Kangaroos would have had to climb down from snowcapped Mount Ararat and hop to Australia without leaving any sign they passed through. No recorded sightings, no bones in Tibet, and across a land bridge that left no trace of its existence. There’s loads of Internet information available on the debate, for example, here and Nye returns to Creationism at several places in the book. Continue reading →

Outlaw Capitalism in Chicago, How People Survive

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Gang LeaderYou’ve probably heard of Freakonomics, a book that has expanded to an empire that looks at how economics drives human behavior in unexpected and sometimes troubling ways. One of their most memorable topics was Chicago drug gangs. Most gang members earn less than minimum wage and stand a good chance of being killed or severely injured, all for a slim chance to become one of the few rich upper-level bosses. They’d be better off with a “legit” job and a lottery ticket.

The man behind the gang data is Sudhir Venkatesh. His book Gang Leader for a Day, A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets, tells the story of six years at Robert Taylor Homes, which in 1962 became “the largest public housing project in the United States” with thirty-thousand residents. By the 1980s when Venkatesh began work, it was “the epitome of an ‘underclass’ urban neighborhood, with the poor living hard and virtually separate lives from the mainstream” and over 90% of the residents receiving government welfare.

He began his study carrying ridiculous survey forms into the projects for his sociology professors and quickly discovered statistics could not describe life there. But this readable book is not his dissertation; it if full of very real personalities and experiences.

The best-known part of the book covers his time with the drug gang. Venkatesh states that he found it “thrilling” to be “observing the thug life.” A few times he was frightened for his own safety, but Venkatesh must be brave – I would have never gone back. Continue reading →

War, Progress, and a Challenge for America

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worth of warWikipedia identifies Benjamin Ginsberg as a libertarian political scientist, professor at Johns Hopkins University, and the author of twenty books. I read his new book, The Worth of War, because I hate the thesis: “Although war is terrible and brutal, history shows that it has been a great driver of human progress.”

No, I thought. War is a terrible destroyer. But there’s more.

“War selects for and promotes certain features of societies that are generally held to represent progress. These include rationality, technological and economic development, and liberal forms of government.”

“Preparation for war often spurs on economic development.”

This is a short book – 175 pages in the body of my Epub version, mostly focused on Europe and America since the 17th century.

Ginsberg uses some terms idiosyncratically. He is fond of “ensorcelled”, which I think is a neat word. But his odd use of “Lamarckian” to mean lessons learned and taught to the next generation may befuddle biologists.

There is much discussion of military techniques and organization – does it really matter if brigades are divided into regiments commanded by colonels, further subdivided into…

But I did learn some interesting tidbits. Between WWI and WWII the US had color coded war plans – ranging from War Plan Black for Germany to War Plan Crimson for Canada; that Rome preferred its legionaries to be at least 5′ 10″ tall; and that modern training techniques have resulted in 90% of soldiers firing their guns in battle versus 15% in WWII.

Via the “curriculum of war” winners learn rationality and develop skills in planning, organizing, and engineering that “spillover” beyond the military. Errors in judgment can be corrected, but countries committed to magical thinking disregard facts and become losers.

Ginsberg presents examples from ancient Greece and Rome [1],China, the European Crusades, Aztecs, and the Soviet Union, but Nazis receive considerable analysis.

The bizarre Nazis ideology of racism led them to believe “mongrel” Americans could pose no military threat, that Slavic peoples were “subhumans,” and that Jews should be exterminated. They diverted war materiel to exterminating the Jews and turned Slavs who initially welcomed them as liberators from Stalin into enemies. The Nazi rejection of “Jewish science” and Jewish professionals created an “enormous transfer of intellectual capital” to their enemies. Thus their adherence to ideology led to their defeat. Continue reading →

Does an Objective Universe Exist?

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Grand DesignThe Grand Design is a physics book that leads from antiquity to today, when a group of overlapping models called M-theory may be the unified theory of everything – though not as easy to write down as E=mc^2. “If the theory is confirmed by observation, it will be the successful conclusion of a search going back more than 3,000 years. We will have found the grand design.”

Stephen Hawking is, of course, a famous professor of mathematics and physics. His co-author Leonard Mlodinow is also a theoretical physicist who has written for Star Trek: The Next Generation. This happy combination produced a book that is casual in tone, with helpful diagrams and nerdy cartoons. I don’t think Mlodinow is the sole source of the book’s approach, since Hawking has appeared in many popular TV shows, including recently on The Big Bang where his sense of self-deprecating humor is evident.

The history of physics is well known and you may wonder if yet another book will add to public understanding. Remember that Richard Feynman once wrote “nobody understands quantum mechanics.” This is because quantum effects are beyond most of our daily experiences. I know intuitively that if I drop a glass it will fall and that if I leave something in a locked room it will be there when I return because of my experience. But cosmic relativity and infinitesimal quantum actions seem unfathomable. Repeated exposure to physics helps and this book, in particular, I enjoyed. Continue reading →

The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower

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great fearThis book by David Caute is extremely long (697 pages including the appendices) and tedious (I skimmed much of it). I disagreed with most of what I read. The dustcover includes the statements that the book is about “…perhaps the greatest crisis that America has ever suffered in terms of her liberal and democratic values. Here is the first comprehensive history of the fearsome anti-Communist purges that affected almost every area of American life in the age of Truman and Eisenhower.” The author expresses skepticism or outright disbelief about numerous cases where people were accused and tried on charges they had spied for the Soviets. The book was written in 1978 before the Venona Project and the information in the Soviet archives became available and proved the extent of the Soviet espionage networks.

I won’t disagree that the lives of many innocent people were impacted. The book begins “…in the high summer of the great fear, (when) the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee warned that ‘the threat to civil liberties in the United States today is the most serious in the history of our country’. Federal, state, and municipal employees were worried that some youthful participation in a now-forbidden organization would come to the attention of the loyalty boards that had been formed because of the fear of communism. The fear reached to people in the military, civil servants, film stars, industrial workers, lawyers, teachers, writers, trade unions, and people serving in or running for public office.” The author admits that what he called “…the purge of the Truman-Eisenhower era…” never “…reached the frontiers of fascism.”

Perhaps the most ill-informed and startling part of the book is in the first page of chapter 3. “There is no documentation in the public record of a direct connection between the American Communist Party and espionage during the entire postwar period…”    Continue reading →