An indictment of American science so critical that it seems beyond hope.
An angry polemic about how American science has deteriorated catastrophically.
Science historian Conner dates the onset from the 1942-1945 Manhattan project, the first “big science” project in which the government spent massively on developing the atom bomb; after this, science became big business. In a series of grim chapters, the author describes the “corporatization” and militarization of American science. Nutrition science is especially debased. Incompetent research, industry-sponsored hype, bribery, and obliging regulators produce wildly contradictory dietary guidelines. Unsurprisingly, “Coca-Cola Company has been particularly culpable in its efforts to misdirect nutrition science regarding sugar.” With the help of well-paid scientists, tobacco companies held off government action for decades, and fossil fuel industries have successfully adopted their techniques to quash efforts to reduce global warming. Denouncing the “green revolution” in agriculture, Conner points out that it has vastly increased food production but that politics and war—not lack of food—cause famines today. He adds that its costly fertilizer and seed enrich large farmers and impoverish poor ones and that the additional chemicals pollute waterways. Military research is an easy mark because so much is genuinely horrible. It’s old news that during World War II, Nazi and Japanese researchers performed sadistic experiments on prisoners. American leaders welcomed them in the hopes of acquiring their expertise. When it comes to weapons that kill innocents, military researchers display an unnerving lack of sympathy, and civilian superiors, Democrat as well as Republican, tend to go along. The author urges vigorous government regulation independent of corporate influence—a no-brainer but spotty in previous administrations, to say nothing of the current one—and 100% government funding and control of research. Though this was a disaster in the Soviet Union and Mao’s China, Conner gives high marks to Cuba. Many democracies exert far stricter government control, which smacks of socialism, a poisonous word to American ears.
An indictment of American science so critical that it seems beyond hope.Pub Date: June 23, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64259-127-9
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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