The Good Servant - Hardcover

Bailey, Janet

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684809397 ISBN 13: 9780684809397

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1995

Synopsis

An account of America's most brilliant nuclear scientists putting their talents to use for peace reveals how the once top-secret weapons laboratories at Los Alamos are being used for peacetime research to benefit humankind. 15,000 first printing.

About this title

From Library Journal

Journalist Bailey lives near Los Alamos, New Mexico, birthplace of the Bomb and still a national laboratory. Her premise is intriguing: what shall the bomb designers, physicists, and dreamers of destruction do now that the Cold War?and hence their work?is over? It turns out to be pretty much what one might expect: some are involved in cosmological research, others in particle physics; one group is developing geothermal energy technology, another group is working on medical imaging, but there is no wholesale swords-to-ploughshares program. (Indeed, most seem to prefer their nuclear work, if such work could be had.) That some of the researchers are working with their erstwhile enemies, the Russians, is salutary; that others are dedicated to preserving the stockpile of nuclear weapons is perhaps less so. In a gentle and pleasing style, Bailey relates nice conversations with economy and irony. She doesn't go as deeply into various tales and projects as some readers might like?which could be a plus for others. General collections with literate reading-room browsers and collections in the defense research sciences should procure. [See also "The Bombs of August, 1945-1995," LJ 7/95, p. 98-100.?Ed.]?Mark L. Shelton, Worcester, Mass.
-?Mark L. Shelton, Worcester, Mass.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

What are Los Alamos scientists working on during this post^-cold war era of funding cuts and unclear missions, 50 years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? A number of exciting and potentially beneficial projects, according to science journalist Bailey. Now that the superpowers are dismantling and disposing of nuclear warheads, the fine art of deterrence is aimed at Third World countries, so some Los Alamos scientists are pursuing improved surveillance technologies. Others are in Baksan, Russia, studying the neutrino, the most elusive of subatomic particles, as part of SAGE, the Soviet-American Gallium Experiment. Then there's Ed Flynn, a Los Alamos biophysicist experimenting with methods for studying and mapping the brain. And, finally, there's the Hot Dry Rock experiment, a search for a way to produce "clean energy" through harnessing the heat generated at the earth's core. Bailey's lively profiles of Los Alamos scientists and cogent descriptions of their work give us hope that physics, which became the science of death, can be turned back into the science of life. Donna Seaman

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0684809397
• ISBN 13: 9780684809397
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192