"ENDLESS FRONTIER: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century"

by G. Pascal Zachary ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1997

Disproving Vannevar Bush's claim that any biography of him would be terrible, Zachary (Show-Stopper!, 1994), a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, deftly follows the life and career of the single most important scientist working for the US during WW II. Zachary relies heavily on Bush's writings as well as on interviews with coworkers and family to construct a portrait of the genius who helped create the military-industrial complex when he served as director of the Office of Scientific research and Development during the war. From Tufts University, where as a student Bush registered his first patent, to Los Alamos and the explosion of the first atomic bomb--a project with which he was intimately involved--Zachary offers a vivid portrait of his subject, warts and all. Given that Bush was arrogantly technocratic (he even questioned whether a post-WW II America could still function as a democracy), Zachary wisely takes a coldly objective point of view. This is not to say that Zachary's portrait of Bush dehumanizes the man. Such details as his apparently chronic nightmares as a result of having engineered the carpet bombings of Germany and Japan, his struggles with failing health and loneliness late in life, and his growing belief that the Allies had won the war but lost the peace, are all noted here. Clearly, Zachary sees Bush's defense of Robert Oppenheimer during the McCarthy-era investigation of the Manhattan Project's principal scientist as his most noble moment. Even under the liberal administrations of Kennedy and Johnson, Bush was revered as an American institution but kept at a safe distance from the White House in a not-always-successful attempt to avoid the controversy that inevitably followed the iconoclastic scientist. Of particular interest to today's technocrat will be Zachary's discussion of how Bush's memex and rapid selector inventions prefigured today's Internet. Bush remains, as this biography demonstrates, a complex, deeply controversial, and profoundly influential figure.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1997

ISBN: 0262740222

Page Count: 512

Publisher: Free Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1997

Categories: NONFICTION