Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century - Hardcover

Gregg Pascal Zachary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684828219 ISBN 13: 9780684828213

Publisher: Free Press, 1997

Synopsis

Follows the life and career of one of the twentieth century's most politically and economically influential engineers and inventors, from his defining role in the rise of America's military-industrial complex to his outspoken criticism of it. 12,500 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

G. Pascal Zachary is a senior writer at the Wall Street Journal. He has lectured on the history of technology at the University of California at Berkeley, the Smithsonian Institution, and Columbia University.

Review

Deeply informed and insightful, Zachary has thoroughly captured the spirit of Bush and his times. In evaluating the man's legacy, he honors Bush as a role model for his generation's engaged engineers. -- The New York Times Book Review, Thomas P. Hughes

This book provides a framework for understanding the incredible changes wrought in U.S. society by the power and influence of government-backed scientific and technological research. It does this by profiling Vannevar Bush, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineer who, as head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), oversaw all wartime military research. He mobilized the nation's scientific and technological talent by funding private research with public funds. He also had the brass to stand up to conservative military leaders and force them to adopt new hardware, such as radar. Author G. Pascal Zachary does a good job of personalizing Bush, who could be decidedly unappealing. The scientist was such an elitist that he questioned whether the United States could continue as a democracy in the post-World War II era. But Zachary also presents a portrait of a dedicated patriot who agonized over his involvement in the wartime carpet-bombings of Germany and Japan. Above all, Bush emerges as a clear thinker who knew how to seize power and wasn't afraid to wield it. This is an important book--not necessarily for the details of Bush's life, but for the view it gives us of how the science/technology establishment grew. This is Vannevar Bush's true legacy, as the person who engineered it. Zachary tells the story with stylistic grace and meticulous attention to detail. -- Upside, Cliff Barney

Vannevar Bush is best known for his 1945 essay As We May Think, which described an imaginary, automated system to link together all of humanity's knowledge. It was a system, in short, that prefigured hypertext and the Web by almost 50 years. But this visionary essay was really just a footnote to the life of a man.... Endless Frontier ... describes how Bush stamped his indelible imprint on our times. But, the ironic coda to this story is that after having helped create the military-industrial complex that defined the postwar era, Bush was deeply unhappy with what he had wrought. Here, Zachary becomes most eloquent, almost elegiacal. -- Wired, Steve G. Steinberg

Edition details

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0684828219
• ISBN 13: 9780684828213
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 528