An engaging yet disquieting portrait of postwar America through the eyes of a pair of brothers who accomplished great things...
In this meticulously researched dual biography of scientist Bernard Vonnegut (1914-1997) and his brother, fiction writer Kurt (1922-2007), Orion contributing editor Strand (Killer on the Road: Violence and the American Interstate, 2012, etc.) focuses on the late 1940s to the early 1950s, when the brothers both worked at General Electric.
“Progress is our most important product,” the company proclaimed, a motto that both Vonneguts came to question. In 1942, Bernie moved from MIT’s meteorology department to the famed GE Research Laboratory, where scientists found the kind of free-ranging opportunities that later would define Silicon Valley: ample time and resources to explore and experiment. There, Bernie joined the team of Project Cirrus, investigating the possibility of “man-controlled weather,” specifically, cloud seeding to produce rain. Kurt, who had been a prisoner of war and witness to the bombing of Dresden, was intent on writing short stories. But in 1945, with a wife and young child to support, he joined GE’s public relations department, “churning out peppy overviews” of GE’s innovations while, at the same time, satirizing the company in short stories that, to his dismay, were repeatedly rejected. Strand closely examines both brothers’ careers in the context of postwar euphoria: science and technology were exalted as paths to a “brave new world,” and the nation flaunted its military and economic might. Optimistic about America’s future when they first joined GE, the brothers became increasingly pessimistic due to the Korean War, the heating up of the arms race, and Cold War politics. When Bernie realized that manipulating weather was seen as a potential weapon, he pressed for government oversight, despite much popular opposition to “planning” and “regulation.” Strand’s thoughtful history, drawn from abundant archival sources, recounts the brothers’ repeated frustrations and disillusion as they confronted, in their own ways, the unsettling ethical questions of their time.
An engaging yet disquieting portrait of postwar America through the eyes of a pair of brothers who accomplished great things in different fields.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-374-11701-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Aug. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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