Book Review

Canada and the United States

Patrick J. McGrath traces the politics of science in the United States from the Progressive era to the New Frontier. His title, however, is rather misleading, as the book's scope is restricted to the ideas of selected members of the scientific elite and their debates about the purposes and control of science. The central figures he examines are Henry R. Towne, Theodore N. Vail, Frank B. Jewett, James B. Conant, Ernest O. Lawrence, Vannevar Bush, David E. Lilienthal, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Lewis Strauss, Edward Teller, and Herbert F. York. The list includes nonscientists and is weighted toward physicists. Even so, the author argues all were key spokesmen whose ideas revealed and shaped scientific ideas in their times.

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McGrath acknowledges at the outset that his discussion "does not represent an exploration of untouched historical ground" (p. 5). Although the author gives few surprises, he makes contributions in his interpretation of how an ideology he calls "scientific militarism" grew out of corporate science, and how that ideology constrained scientific debate during the early Cold War. He explicitly argues against deterministic interpretations that would see scientific militarism as an inevitable product of social and institutional structures. Not all will be convinced, but he argues that the ideology emerged from political interplay, events, and especially values until eventually its tropes acquired their own "momentum" (p. 128).

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