Average customer rating:
- The Face Of Eternity and The Mind Of God
- Our Town, a short yet entertaining read that captures the several stages of life.
- Our Town utilizes simplicity to its max
- Small Town America
- much more than nothing
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Our Town: A Play in Three Acts (Perennial Classics)
Thornton Wilder
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
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ASIN: 0060512636
Release Date: 2003-09-23 |
Book Description
A handsome Perennial Classics edition of America's favourite play, Our Town, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
First produced and published in 1938, this Pulitzer Prize–winning drama of life in the small village of Grover's Corners has become an American classic and is Thornton Wider's most renowned and most frequently performed play.
This Perennial Classics edition includes a foreword by Donald Margulies and contains an afterword with documentary material edited by Tappan Wilder.
Customer Reviews:
The Face Of Eternity and The Mind Of God.......2007-10-04
By most accounts Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) considered himself a teacher rather than a writer--a curious situation given than he won numerous literary awards, including three Pulitzers. Among these prize-winners was OUR TOWN, first staged in 1938. It is generally considered to be the single most famous play written by an American author, and Samuel French Inc., which holds the amateur performance rights, states that it is performed at least once a day somewhere in the world, as popular abroad as at home.
The play is perhaps most widely known for the way in which it is staged. The stage is bare. A few chairs, stools, tables, and ladders are used to indicate a kitchen, a bed room window, a soda fountain, a cemetery and other locations; the actors mime use of imaginary glasses, plates, bowls, satchels, and boxes.
The story is equally simple. The first act introduces us to the town, Grover's Corners in New Hampshire, seen in the early years of the 20th Century--and most particularly to the Gibbs and Webb families, who live next door to each other. The second act finds boy-next-door George and girl-next-door Emily marrying, and a flash-black shows the audience how their romance began. It is a simple tale, full of details of small town life, church choir on Wednesday night, milk delivered fresh each morning, breakfast to be made, chickens to be fed--and slowly, as the action moves forward, we are drawn into this simple way of life and its seemingly endless and trivial repetitions.
Wilder swirls a number of themes throughout the work, themes that are simple yet profound, details of the particular and the universal--and these gather suddenly, unexpectedly in the third and final act, which comes as a shock after the charming ease of the play. Emily has died in childbirth and she takes her place in the cemetery among the dead, all of whom patiently wait and watch for something which is not yet clear, the minutes passing one by one into eternity, their memories of life fading into nothingness, a portrait of darkness that is yet somehow still seeded with light. It is here that Wilder makes his ultimate statement: who are you when you have been shorn of all earthly details and devices? Where do you exist within the mind of God?
Many non-theatre people find playscripts difficult to read, and in truth playscripts are a blueprint for directors and actors and not intended as reading material for the general public. This is preface to the very basic statement that some plays "read" well and some do not--and that this is not necessarily an indication of how the play actually performs. On the page, OUR TOWN reads a bit flat; it seems a shade obvious, a shade ordinary. On the stage, however, it easily one of the most delicately beautiful constructs imaginable, a play which demonstrates the beauty and value of each life--no matter how ordinary it may be. Remarkable stuff and strongly recommended.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
Our Town, a short yet entertaining read that captures the several stages of life........2007-06-12
Thorton Wilder's short play, "Our Town," follows the lives of two close knit families, experiencing the different stages of life: birth, childhood, adulthood and death. I recommend anyone to read this play just so they can have the opportunity to read about the phases that others go through. For example, the story mentions the common worries, concerns and yearnings of parent Mrs.Gibbs, who wishes to take a break from the stressful life of being a mother yet she is held back by the contrasting wishes and aspirations of her husband. "Our Town" is filled with amusing yet relatable events of being disciplined by your parents, which remind us of our childhood, such as when George is admonished by his father. Another interesting tale unfolds as we witness a young relationship between George and Emily flourish into a marriage. Their entertaining anxieties while dating, and even getting married, are humorous and thought provoking for young readers. Unexpected turns of events and sudden losses conclude the story, leaving an important message for the reader which is, care and treasure your loved ones while you still can.
Our Town utilizes simplicity to its max.......2007-06-12
One significant feature of this play is its simplicity in both plot and props. While it carries great meaning throughout, the story does not feature any extreme, earth-shattering events. Instead, it presents the plain, daily occurrences in a normal small town, allowing the reader to follow the story in a simple context. In addition, although the reader undergoes a different experience than the play-goer, it is evident to all that the conspicuous lack of props is a prominent element that further emphasizes the simplicity of the story.
In three acts, Our Town presents a complete view of three different stages of life: daily life, love and marriage, and death. The play focuses on two families, the Gibbs and Webb families, yet it gives a panoramic view of many townspeople's lives in Grover's Corners. More specifically, the play follows the relationship between Emily Webb and George Gibbs. We first witness them in their youth, as they realize their passion for each other. The story then skips forward to their marriage and finally to Emily's death, as she is finally able to witness her life without actually worrying about daily demands. When she is finally allowed to witness life in her town pass by as a spectator, Emily falls into a heavy regret at her wasted life, as she realizes that nobody takes the time to truly look at each other.
Stressing the importance of the simple, daily wonders of the world, Thornton Wilder underscores the appreciation of life due to both its brevity and its inherent beauty. The third act is truly epochal, as it presents the general purpose of the play through the death of Emily; as she relives her 12th birthday, she realizes that no one cares to really appreciate each other or their own lives. Emily, as with every other citizen in town, is too concerned with her own life that she is unable to see the beauty of it, and she ends up missing the most seemingly trivial of things afterwards, such as sleeping and taking baths. Wilder, by contrasting Emily's life with her death, demonstrates the consequences of falling into a state of content and complacency with one's life; instead of blindly following a routinely schedule everyday, Wilder teaches the audience that they must be grateful for the daily wonders of life, as they may be gone the next day.
This is not a good book for those seeking entertaining and action-packed plots. Truthfully, I did not enjoy reading this book until I understood the meaning in the final act. At first glance, the play seems to drag on, depicting the mundane lives of ordinary people. Yet when I got to the third act, I realized that this is exactly how Wilder wanted us to feel: bored in the first two acts at the seemingly simple things in life, yet remorseful in the last act due to the intrinsic ungratefulness of our lives. Anyone looking for play with a relevant, significant message to everyone's lives should pick up this book immediately.
Small Town America.......2007-06-12
Wilder's Our Town was by far one of the strangest books I have ever read. It was a pretty good book. Set in typical Small Town, USA, Wilder explores how humans understand and under-appreciate the notion of time. The first act is typical, the second act is special, and the third act is monumental. Wilder's style is slightly odd, because when I first read the play, I couldn't completely understand his purpose. It was when I read it the second time I understood that he was criticizing how we as people never understand how to love the lives that we have. It's the lesson we are taught all the time, yet we never seem to take to heart. I know that all plays were meant to be seen rather than read, but this is the only play I've read where I feel that the only way to grasp the author emotion is to actually see the play instead of reading the book. Still, it was worth the read.
much more than nothing.......2007-06-12
When first reading this play, it may appear to be about nothing more than the every day life in an ordinary town. However, it is much more than that. This town is representative of any little town in all of America and its actions as something that could have been done anywhere. These simple facts expand the scopes of this play to new heights. It is not just a play about the little events that occur in a small time but is rather representative of life as a whole. Each act represents a stage in life: "Daily Life," "Marriage" and "Death." These words take on new meaning though as the daily life seems so dull that no one would ever want to live there, yet hardly anyone leaves; the marriage is somewhat pushed on George and Emily; and finally, Emily dies along with many other characters who are seen as being more "alive" than any of the living characters in this play. It takes on many unique points of view and teaches many lessons, making it necessary to take it apart completely. The most incredible part is that all of this is contained in a book about "nothing."
One major thing that is pointed out in this play is that people walk through life without ever really seeing anything, and this is shown on many an occasion, not really being noticed until it is too late to do anything about. People that are alive do not have the worries that life will be short because they are still living it. They do not worry about spending each second like it was their last because it is not. They live life on a day to day basis, not worrying about whether or not they live it to its fullest because there will always be more time. The worst part is that life could end at any minute. And when that person has not lived a full enough life, they will have no one to blame but themselves for not appreciating it when they had it. It is often said that people do not miss things until they are gone, and this is one more example. If only people could miss it when they still had it, then losing it would not be such a tragedy because they would have been happy either way.
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Our Town A Play in Three Acts
Manufacturer: Harper Colophon Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000E7VCUQ |
Product Description
Our Town was first produced and published in 1938 to wide acclaim. This Pulitzer Prizewinning drama of life in the small village of Grover's Corners, an allegorical representation of all life, has become a classic. It is Thornton Wilder's most renowned and most frequently performed play.
Average customer rating:
- Literature, It is Not...
- very fast paced!
- Complete rubbish
- Australian SF Reader
- Insipid, inane, inept tripe
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Ice Station
Matthew Reilly
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Paperbacks
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Seven Deadly Wonders: A Novel
ASIN: 0312971230 |
Book Description
Anarctica is the last unconquered continent, a murderous expanse of howling winds, blinding whiteouts and deadly crevasses. On one edge of Antarctica is Wilkes Station. Beneath Wilkes Station is the gate to hell itself....A team of U.S. divers, exploring three thousand feet beneath the ice shelf has vanished. Sending out an SOS, Wilkes draws a rapid deployment team of Marines-and someone else....First comes a horrific firefight. Then comes a plunge into a drowning pool filled with killer whales. Next comes the hard part, as a handful of survivors begin an electrifying, red-hot, non-stop battle of survival across the continent and against wave after wave of elite military assassins-who've all come for one thing: a secret buried deep beneath the ice....
Customer Reviews:
Literature, It is Not..........2007-10-02
Reilly certainly has a way of grabbing you by the short-hairs and never letting go. This is a non-stop action-adventure story that would probably do better in the fantasy section. Keep in mind that this is a purely fictional story (at best) and not try to relate it in any way, shape, or form to reality. With a reccomendation by Richard Marcinko on the cover, one is lead to believe that Reilly's work is going to have the same demand for logical, realistic warfare that Marcinko's novels do. This is not the case at all. While it reads like a summer blockbuster movie, it lacks in the arena of realism. The characters come through as shallow, which is good, because very few make it to the end of the story. Still, the ones that do could use a little fleshing out. Reilly's writing style breaks the fourth wall on far too many occassions. He even interupts his own "thoughts" with action sequences. Not enough of any of the truly mysterious elements are explained to the satisfaction of the reader. That being said, it is a book that you will rip through in no time. It certainly is a great time-killer as long as you know what you're getting into. It is not realistic at all. But that's good, because the real world is not this much fun.
very fast paced!.......2007-09-09
So fast paced yet story is so rich with military facts and scientific explanations, that I wish I have this kinda book with me in every long-distance flight!
Complete rubbish.......2007-08-07
Never read such garbage. Had to keep on reading to see if got any better it didn't.
The funniest bit on p490 approx "What happenned next was completely incredible"
If you have not found anything beyond credibility before this page then we've been reading different books.
I know its a action fiction but you have to stay within some bounds of realism.
Australian SF Reader.......2007-08-01
Highly enjoyable action thriller, and that is thriller with a capital Bloody Crazy. Shane Schofield is a marine recon captain named Scarecrow, and is ordered to take a mission to a facility in the ice that has not been heard from for awhile.
He realises that the evil dastardy French have sent their own version of his recon team, so he has to complete with them, some of the best crazy chase scenes ever, killer mutant seals, and the advanced tech plane he has been sent to deal with.
Over the top widescreen action thriller, with craziness, explosions, shooting, chases and dead people. Loads of fun, and that is all it is supposed to be.
Insipid, inane, inept tripe.......2007-07-14
First time reading a Reilly book. It will be the last. The ridiculous plot line is barely tolerable even taken at face value i.e. an "action-adventure yarn". This author obviously does no research at all. He writes off the top of his head just to produce "action," but there is little semblance of any reality in what he describes whether e.g. it's surgical procedures and animal physiology to technology.
This book was recommended as an alternative to eg Crichton, Preston, L. Child and James Rollins. Wrong, not even close. All those authors are ultra consistent in their stories and on a totally different writing level (read: post-college).
Reilly is a mediocre writer and if his goal is to dwell in the action adventure genre that others have successfully exploited eg Clive Cussler (who I also judge as inferior to the above), then the inside jackets of his books should warn potential readers that his writing is catering to the young male teenager population.
Book Description
Travelogue, cultural meditation, and love story, On the Ice casts a panoramic view on one of the oddest communities in one of the most extreme places on earth. Sent to Antarctica as an observer by the National Science Foundation, Gretchen Legler arrives at McMurdo Station in midwinter, a time of -70 degree temperatures and months of near-total darkness. A lesbian struggling with a tumultuous past, she hopes to escape her own demons and present an intimate view of a place few will ever visit. What she discovers is a community of people stripped of any excess by the necessities of existence in a harsh land, where revered scientists are referred to as “beakers”; where cherished belongings are left without regret in a communal lost-and-found; and where women are rare but lesbians in high proportion. Forced to confront her own fears, Legler experiences firsthand how landscape and community allow a life to reset.
Customer Reviews:
At Home at the Bottom of the World.......2007-07-19
Nature writing is changing. The surest mark of that change is the fact that Gretchen Legler's book, On the Ice: An Intimate Portrait of Life at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, was chosen as the best book of environmental creative writing published in 2005-2006 by the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment.
On the Ice is the story of what it means to find home, and heart, in the frozen place at the bottom of the world. With other artists, Gretchen Legler was offered the opportunity to spend a season in Antarctica under the auspices of the National Science Foundation Artists and Writers Program, to tell the story of the land, to try her hand "at making some human sense of its vastness and its terrible beauty." It was a quest, she says, not only to explore and discover new lands, but also inner worlds, "places that I hoped being so far from my ordinary self would help me find."
Antarctica as a place is extraordinarily far from the places our ordinary selves inhabit, and Legler wants us not just to know but to feel the distance, and to feel it as the explorers of a century ago must have felt it. She sleeps in a room that is only a stone's throw from the hut where Robert Scott set off in 1911 for his tragic bid to reach the Pole: "Good God, this is an awful place," he wrote. She spends time with other explorers who are looking even farther back, into the unthinkably remote geologic past of the Polar region, into samples of sea floor at Cape Roberts, goes naked into the coldest water on the globe, and ventures into ice caves in the Erebus glacier, blue caves, blue, blue "like an endlessly deep hole in your heart . . . a color that is like some kind of yearning, some unfulfilled desire, or some constant, extreme joy." And then there is the sea ice, glowing "peach and pink, nearly neon, buttery yellow, lavender, jade, and indigo," colors painted by Edmund Wilson, Scott's chief scientist, whose watercolors, she says are filled with, focused on light and color, color and light. And finally, there is the Pole, a "sacred destination," she says, not only for explorers but scientists and, yes, artists and writers, who find it the perfect place to look down into the mysteries at the earth's heart and up, into the mysteries of the universe, "the very farthest edge of darkness."
On the Ice is a luminous study of a remarkable place, a place that is so sublime as to almost defy human description. But as humans, we must place ourselves: we long to live in place and to make even the remotest place a home. And so the book is also about the men and women who live there, about the scientists, support staff, builders, workers, engineers, electricians, cooks, communications technicians--all the people it takes to make a home in an inhospitable place. These are people, by and large, who are willing, perhaps even anxious, to shed their ordinary selves and live in an extraordinary way, coping with the isolation and the cold and the loneliness, building a community of fellow-travelers, each with his or her own sometimes desperate reasons for coming to a place so unimaginably distant and different from the places where the rest of us live. These are funny people, weird people, misfits, heroes, people who live on hope and thrive on hard truths, people who have come away from the "real" world to invent themselves in a different reality.
But On the Ice isn't just about the place or the people. It's about Legler's own journey to the frozen wastes within herself, into her own frozen heart, which is thawed, incredibly, by the power of love. "How do you come to know place?" she asks. "How do you come to know self? . . . How do you let go of wounds and resentments and fierce anger, not begrudgingly, but as an act of grace?" She finds the answer to this age-old question in her relationship with Ruth, an electrician who helps her to shed "all that junk . . .all those layers of old self" and discover a new and loving self, a warm and passionate heart, in this frozen world. Some readers, particularly those who believe that books of natural history ought to exclude the historian's experience, may think that this part of the journey should have been omitted, as not quite worthy of the heroic spectacle that is the Antarctic. But that's the way it's always been, Legler reminds us: the personal has always been defined, she says, as "somehow gossipy or small, beyond or below the reach of proper recording." But why? Why do we deny the human perspective of place, since this is the only perspective we have? And why exclude the innermost experience, merely to focus on the outer? "Why obscure the intimate?" Legler asks. "Why shorten the story of the glorious complexity and depth of the human in order to make a neater, grander tale?"
Legler's journey--and her record of it--is all the more remarkable because it is an intimate journey, not only to the farthest place on earth but into the deepest desires and dreams of the human spirit. It's a singularly brave journey, as heroic in its way as the journeys of Scott and Shackleton and Amundsen, one more exploration of the truest human question: what it means to be at home on this earth. There are a great many books that will give you the cold, hard facts about the Antarctic. But as a book about place, a chronicle of life at the bottom of the world, and an intensely honest record of a spiritual journey, On the Ice is the most richly illuminating of all.
Susan Wittig Albert, co-editor of What Wildness is This: Women Write About the Southwest, University of Texas Press, 2007
Simply Horrid.......2006-12-27
I read this book while in Antarctica last year and had to force myself to finish it. It became a contest of wills to see if I could red the entire book. McMurdo is a weird place, no doubt about it. But somehow, while the author perhaps had the best intentions, it veered off into something that becomes rather incomprehensible. I spent over seven seasons on the ice and there are so many other stories to tell; the people, scientists, raytheon, projects, science, bureaucracy, idiocy, etc., that would make a great story. This book is unfortunately not a great story. Buy another book, any other book...
Her visit was intended to research the landscape; her book is about the crazy people she found there.......2006-05-20
McMurdo Station, Antarctica is home to freezing temperatures, months of nearly total darkness and regular near-hurricane force winds. It's also home to a permanent station, McMurdo, and for a season was home to author Gretchen Legler, who tells of this season and those who have journeyed to Antarctica to escape life. Her visit was intended to research the landscape; her book is about the crazy people she found there. ON THE ICE is thus about an exploration few others will make: you'll have to read the book to live her discoveries vicariously.
Diane C. Donovan, Editor
California Bookwatch
Horrible...Sorry, Really Horrible.......2006-05-15
I'm sorry to say this, but this is simply a horrible book. Gretchen Legler is too self-absorbed, too self-pitying, simply too selfish. Her grant from the NSF Artist and Writers Program surely wasn't intended to fund this whining drivel about how much her parents don't love her, about how she found lesbian love in Antarctica, about tangental ramblings that meander into nothingness.
Surely, it can't be about the prose, either. This writer, simply, uses, too, many, run-on, sentences...the overuse, of, the, comma, is, almost Shatner-esque, in, a, way. Here is a quote...one sentence, mind you, wherein even she has to remind herself TWICE what she's writing about midway through:
"When the first bit of core, real core, not just mud from the surface, came out of the drill, says Brian Reid, one of the bearded, bright-eyed New Zealanders at Cape Roberts, telling a story over tea in the camp's galley - when the first bit of real core came out of that noise, yellow-engine-pounding room full of small, tight men with hard hats, gloves, and mud-splattered faces, when that first long roll of dark clayey material came up, and when driller Pat "The Rat" Cooper, who's drilled all over the world, when Pat himself brought the core into the drill site lab, people started yelling all around, "He hit the hard stuff, He hit the hard stuff," well, you should have just seen it - "Pat and Peter holding it and jumping up and down just like kids, just like kids, just like kids."
Good Lord. That is ONE SENTENCE! Pages and pages and pages of this. It's maddening.
If you really want to read about life on "the ice," I strongly suggest Rolf Smith's excellent "Life on the Ice: No One Goes to Antarctica Alone," or Nicholas Johnson's "Big Dead Place: Inside the Strange and Menacing World of Antarctica." Both are wonderful accounts of the mysterious land down south. Neither will frustrate you, nor do they care one damn bit about why some self-absorbed writer's daddy won't call her. Boo-hoo.
Should be titled "How I became infatuated with Ruth (in Antarctica)".......2006-01-07
I completely agree with the comments made by the reader from Cleveland. This book is horrible! Roff Smith's book "Life on the ice" is infinitely better. NSF got ripped off funding this author.
Book Description
The Dolphin, pride of America's nuclear fleet, is the only submarine capable of attempting the rescue of a British meteorological team trapped on the polar ice cap. The officers of the Dolphin know well the hazards of such an assignment. What they do not know is that the rescue attempt is really a cover-up for one of the most desperate espionage missions of the Cold War -- and that the Dolphin is heading straight for sub-zero disaster, facing hidding sabotage, murder . . . and a deadly, invisible enemy . . .
Customer Reviews:
Not Free SF Reader.......2007-09-24
A British meterological station is in danger, and those staffing it will soon be dead without help. An American nuclear sub is sent out to help them, along with a doctor that is an expert in the sort of afflictions they may have developed.
However, this American sub also has an underlying spook mission to go along with the rescue. This hidden agenda causes a hell of a lot of problems and casualiies throughout.
Murder On and Under the Ice.......2007-02-10
Alistair MacLean's 1963 Cold War thriller "Ice Station Zebra" opens with a British doctor named Carpenter trying to talk his way aboard the American Navy's nuclear submarine "Dolphin" in a lonely harbor in Scotland. His announced mission is to organize the rescue of the crew of a British meteorological station on an ice island in the Arctic, victims of a deadly fire. As with many MacLean novels, neither the leading characters nor the mission are quite what they appear to be.
"Ice Station Zebra" traces the Dolphin's exciting run under the polar ice pack to reach the last know location of Ice Station Zebra. There, Dr. Carpenter and a group of volunteers from the crew of Dolphin will dare the weather and the ice pack to find the station and rescue its stricken crew. Carpenter quickly discovers that the fire at Ice Station Zebra was no accident; among the surviving members of the Ice Station is a ruthless killer who will stop at nothing, including holding at risk the Dolphin, to achieve his mysterious purpose. Carpenter himself proves to have a very personal stake in the outcome of the struggle with the killer. MacLean's brisk prose and sardonic dialogue keep the suspense crackling to the very last page.
By the time he wrote "Ice Station Zebra", MacLean had become a highly proficient story-teller. If parts of this novel seem a little contrived, the wise reader will relax and enjoy the ride. This novel is highly recommended to fans of the Cold War spy story and to fans of Alistair MacLean, master storyteller.
I could not put this book down!.......2006-07-21
This was the first work of Mr. MacLean's that I read and it left me spellbound up to the last page. I saw the movie first, but the book far ourweighed it for suspense, intrigue and action. The author's style of writing is similar to that of the "Quiller" novels, yet he has his own "fingerprint" that kept me guessing how the Dolphin was going to fare out. I will be reading "The Secret Ways" and "Circus" next...I highly recommend this book to anyone that enjoy's a thinking person's thriller.
Rereadable..........2005-09-16
Anyone with a taste for naval warfare, mysteries and the Arctic in general will find this a fascinating read. I first read this book in my teens. I still return to it occasionally and never find it boring. I haven't watched the 1968 movie version of this book.
Tension and adventure under and on the polar icecap........2004-12-05
Unlike some of this author's novels, Ice Station Zebra is an easy-to-read, quick moving story that doesn't bore. Forget the movie (except you can visualize some of the actors as you read since casting was well done.) The action aboard the submarine provides some tense reading moments.
Average customer rating:
- A Wake-Up Call
- Is there a hydrogen bomb in Libya's future?
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Tritium on Ice: The Dangerous New Alliance of Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Power
Kenneth D. Bergeron
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0262025272 |
Book Description
In December 1998, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson announced that the U.S. planned to begin producing tritium for its nuclear weapons in commercial nuclear power plants. This decision overturned a fifty-year policy of keeping civilian and military nuclear production processes separate. Tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, is needed to turn A-bombs into H-bombs, and the commercial nuclear power plants that are to be modified to produce tritium are called ice condensers. This book provides an insider's perspective on how Richardson's decision came about, and why it is dangerous.
Kenneth Bergeron shows that the new policy is unwise not only because it undermines the U.S. commitment to curb nuclear weapons proliferation but also because it will exacerbate serious safety problems at these commercial power facilities, which are operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority and are among the most marginal in the United States. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's review of the TVA's request to modify its plants for the new nuclear weapons mission should attract significant attention and opposition.
Tritium on Ice is part expose, part history, part science for the lay reader, and part political science. Bergeron's discussion of how the issues of nuclear weapons proliferation and nuclear reactor safety have become intertwined illuminates larger issues about how the federal government does or does not manage technology in the interests of its citizens and calls into question the integrity of government-funded safety assessments in a deregulated economy.
Customer Reviews:
A Wake-Up Call.......2002-11-15
This is a compelling, timely and informative work by a knowledgable insider. Kenneth Bergeron explains in this clear, concise narrative the inner workings of our nuclear establishment and why civilian and military uses had been historically kept separate. A policy that is even more important today. He documents the complex and disturbing process that culminated in a 1998 decision to abandon this vital policy and the underlying factors that subordinated the public interest. This is a "must read" work that will move readers to add their voices to those seeking to reverse a dangerous decision before it is too late.
Is there a hydrogen bomb in Libya's future?.......2002-11-06
Someone wishing to make a hydrogen bomb needs to obtain some tritium. At the present time, tritium in suitable quantities can only be obtained in the U.S. through the highly guarded nuclear weapons program. In this extraordinarily well written book, Bergeron calls attention to a little-known 1998 decision by then energy secretary Bill Richardson which, when implemented, would shift tritium production to the commercial side of the nuclear industry. One purpose of the great wall that used to separate nuclear power from nuclear weapons was minimizing the chance that third-world countries like Libya could obtain the ingredients to make A-bombs and even the more powerful h-bombs. Bergeron, a nuclear insider, leads his readers through the dark corners and hallways of the nuclear power and nuclear weapons industries. He shows how the great wall would be breached by implementation of this decision. The story is captivating. Bergeron tells it very well. The problem is real. And Bergeron points out that there's still time to do something about it. With the end of the Cold War, the US doesn't need more tritium any time soon.
Average customer rating:
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Ice Station Zebra
Manufacturer: Doubleday
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000CRI4YU |
Average customer rating:
- A 'must' for any collection
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Drift Station: Arctic Outposts of Superpower Science
William F. Althoff
Manufacturer: Potomac Books Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Polar Regions
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ASIN: 1574887718 |
Book Description
Closed to conventional passage, the Arctic Ocean and peripheral seas have nevertheless known European explorers since the sixteenth century. Systematic observation, however, dates only from the last years of the nineteenth century, with the epic drift of Fridtjof Nansen’s ice ship Fram (1893-1896), the first scientific expedition of the modern era. Twentieth-century technology—the icebreaker, radio transmission, nuclear power, and aircraft—opened the Arctic for survey, basic research, and observation. World War II saw the inhospitable circumpolar Arctic transformed into a theater of military operations.
The Cold War and the missile age saw governments staking further claims, because only a relatively short arc of maritime boreal waste separated North America and Eurasia. The complex interactions of air, ice, and water that drive circumpolar systems also serve as engines of oceanic and atmospheric circulation. As a result, meteorology, oceanography, geophysics, and many other areas of scientific research in the region soon became acutely linked to the economic, political, and particularly the politico-military interests of the Soviet Union, the United States, Canada, and the other Arctic nations.
In response, both superpowers established “drift stations”—that is, isolated camps based on nomadic ice floes—to conduct crucial scientific research. During the Cold War, they were the objects of suspicion, particularly the Soviet stations, which often stood accused as bases for espionage. Today, with the world’s climate system and global warming under study, Russian expertise, data, geography, and stewardship are crucial to the world community.
Customer Reviews:
A 'must' for any collection .......2007-04-19
The Cold War and subsequent years saw governments staking claims in the Arctic through the establishment of isolated 'drift stations' on ice floes, which conducted key scientific research. While such stations were military in nature, they've evolved to become key outposts of scientific research, offering up studies in meteorology, oceanography, and other disciplines with results moving beyond the political and military interests of the superpowers and the Arctic nations. DRIFT STATION details history from early explorers to modern times and is a 'must' for any collection strong in either military or scientific history.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Average customer rating:
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Ice Station
Matthew Reilly
Manufacturer: Macmillan Audio Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD
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Contest
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The Wheel of Darkness
ASIN: 1405005157 |
Average customer rating:
- Long on history, short on drama
- Excellent book - insights into 1950-60s military Arctic ops
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Project Coldfeet: Secret Missiom to a Soviet Ice Station (Naval Institute Special Warfare Series)
William M. Leary , and
Leonard A. Leschack
Manufacturer: US Naval Institute Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Intelligence & Espionage
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ASIN: 1557505144 |
Customer Reviews:
Long on history, short on drama.......2007-04-04
If you are a fan of the history of the period, you will like this book. It grinds on and on with dry dull facts. Better than 3/4 of the book is devoted to general cold war history. Only in the last 2-3 chapters is the drama of the mission told
Excellent book - insights into 1950-60s military Arctic ops.......1997-11-01
An intersting account highlighting US military and Soviet Arctic studies, with interludes briefly covering CIA propietary airlines and the development of the Fulton/Skyhook retrieval system. Points out why both countries considered the Arctic important for study for military purposes during the height of the Cold War. Well written, with firsthand accounts from the people involved in a dramatic plan to parachute personnel near a just-evacuated Soviet ice station to reveal its secrets, then recover them with the first operational use of the Fulton recovery system, also known as Skyhook. (Seen in movies such as Thunderball and The Green Berets.)Highly recommended for anyone interested in Arctic studies or covert operations during the Cold War.
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