The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford by Stuart W. Leslie
TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Book Reviews 629 contrast to the first, is essentially topical. It treats solar, cosmic ray, and upper atmospheric and ionospheric research, following the technical and managerial problems that each group of researchers faced in using rockets as instrument carriers. DeVorkin pays special attention to how the several traditional scientific communities responded to rocket-based findings. Many readers will find part 2, in particular, hard going; the author clearly knows a good deal about the sciences he discusses and the instruments needed for their study and makes few concessions to those less familiar with the material. From the viewpoint of a historian of technology, Science with a Vengeance offers two major subjects of interest: first, the process of making scientific instruments useable in rockets; and second, the human structure that supported the enterprise. Developing the scientific instru ments required to exploit the novel opportunity high-altitude rockets offered was a complex process, involving a range of technical skills not previously associated with high-altitude research. Partly for that reason, the data they yielded found a cool reception among traditional practitio ners that could be overcome only with much effort. DeVorkin also devotes substantial attention to defining the complex organizational structure of the V-2 experimental program and to tracing the interactions between military sponsors, various laboratories and research groups, and diverse research traditions. It offers a compelling case study of another area of science altered by postwar military patronage. Two features of the book deserve special mention. The list of abbreviations and acronyms is up front where it belongs (pp. xvii-xviii). Also up front is a substantial chronology (pp. xix-xxii), especially useful for keeping track of things in the book’s topical second part. Unfortu nately, the 109 illustrations contribute less than they might. Though often interesting and providing potentially relevant glimpses of people, equipment, instruments, and other subjects, they are not especially well integrated into text and so lose much of their impact. Barton C. Hacker Dr. Hacker is historian at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. His historiographi cal essay on military institutions, military technology, and social change will appear in the next issue of T&C. The Cold, War andAmerican Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford. By Stuart W. Leslie. New York: Columbia Uni versity Press, 1993. Pp. xiii+332; illustrations, notes, index. $42.00. The subtitle of Stuart Leslie’s book indicates more accurately the actual contents: detailed depictions of how certain departments and laboratories at Stanford and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) developed in close interaction with the Department of Defense and defense contractors in the quarter century after World War II. The 630 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE main title describes the context for these contents: the impact of the Cold War on American science, which is here interpreted as being almost wholly regrettable. The connection between the context and the contents, however, is loose at best. Whereas the descriptions of the military-industrial-academic (M-I-A) complex are detailed and carefully documented, assertions about Cold War science raise issues that are neither analyzed nor fully aired. The substance of the book consists of eight neatly paired case histories of the development at each university ofresearch in electronics, aeronau tical engineering, nuclear science, and materials science. Each of these complex histories can stand by itself (several were previously published in somewhat different guise). They typically include prewar and wartime antecedents, the initiation of postwar research programs, the vast expan sion of these programs, usually during the military build-up of the 1950s, ties with interested industrial concerns, and finally some account of relevant developments in the 1960s. These rich accounts are admirable blends of scientific and institutional developments—perhaps the best de pictions to date ofthe dynamics oflarge-scale military-sponsored academic research. Each is concluded, however, with a cryptic observation about the perils involved: for example, “working for and with the military gave MIT’s physicists unprecedented resources and status. . . . But it cost them some thing too—if not their self-image, then their independence” (p. 159). These forebodings are scarcely self-evident in the accounts of the accom plishments. Thus, there is considerable need for integration—chrono logically, institutionally...
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