Wednesday, July 3, 2002

Tuxedo Park by Jennet Conant: Alfred Loomis and his powerful influence in creating the US scientific-military alliance in WW II and beyond deserved attention. But this book doesn't satisfy. The popular news weekly style scales up poorly to book length, especially when the same cliches recur every other chapter. Scientific and technological topics, so important to the story, are covered cursorily, sometimes embarrassingly ("soundproofed with copper netting to eliminate any interfering electrical noise" -- soundproofed!?). Historical perspective is lacking: airborne radar is presented as the critical technology in the battle against U-boats, ignoring the role of the Enigma decrypts, for example. For anyone who could not put down Richard Rhodes's The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Andrew Hodges's Alan Turing: the Enigma or Steve Budiansky's Battle of Wits, Conant's book is pretty disappointing. 10:48:05 PM