Defusing Armageddon – Jeffrey T. Richelson ***

If I had to choose a two word phrase to sum up this book, it would be ‘wasted opportunity.’ So often in the popular science field, a good writer can take a subject that really has little relevance to the world around us (Fermat’s Last Theorem, for instance) and turn it into a cracking read. Here Jeffrey Richelson has taken what should have been a real page-turner of a subject – the story of the semi-secret US meta-organization tasked with dealing with nuclear threats, from accidents to terrorist attacks – and made it dull as the proverbial ditchwater. (Why is ditchwater dull? I bet it’s teeming with pond life.)

Okay, there is one thing Richelson is working against. The vast majority of occasions that NEST (said meta-organization) has swung into action have been hoaxes, false alarms and drills – for which we should all be truly thankful. But that’s not enough to explain why this book is so dull. Richelson insists on listing every mission, every piece of equipment, as if he were writing a civil service manual rather than a book for a general audience. Even the photographs are of dull people we don’t really identify. We don’t get any sense of characters here, just names on the ID badges.

This would make an excellent source book for anyone researching the attempts to keep America (and to some extent the rest of the world) safe from nuclear disaster, but it’s best use for the general reader is as a way to get to sleep very quickly.

Hardback:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Target Earth – Govert Schilling *****

I was biased in favour of this great little book even before I started to read it, simply because it’s so short. I’m sure that a lot of people who buy popular science books just want an overview and taster of a subject that’s brand new to them – and that’s likely to work best if the author keeps it short and to the point. Of course, you may want to dig deeper in areas that really interest you, but that’s what Google is for. That basic principle aside, I’m still in awe at how much substance Govert Schilling has managed to cram into this tiny book. It’s essentially about all the things (natural things, I mean, not UFOs or space junk) that can end up on Earth after coming down from outer space. That ranges from the microscopically small particles of cosmic dust that accumulate in our gutters, all the way up to the ten kilometre wide asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Between these extremes are two topics that we’ve reviewed entire books about recently: meteorites ( The Meteorite Hunt...

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

The Language of Mathematics - Raúl Rojas ***

One of the biggest developments in the history of maths was moving from describing relationships and functions with words to using symbols. This interesting little book traces the origins of a whole range of symbols from those familiar to all, to the more obscure squiggles used in logic and elsewhere. On the whole Raúl Rojas does a good job of filling in some historical detail, if in what is generally a fairly dry fashion. We get to trace what was often a bumpy path as different symbols were employed (particularly, for example, for division and multiplication, where several still remain in use), but usually, gradually, standards were adopted. This feels better as a reference, to dip into if you want to find out about a specific symbol, rather than an interesting end to end read. Rojas tells us the sections are designed to be read in any order, which means that there is some overlap of text - it feels more like a collection of short essays or blog posts that he couldn't be bothered ...

Search This Blog