New Men [Paperback]

Charles Percy Snow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1954

It is the onset of World War II in the fifth in the Strangers and Brothers series. A group of Cambridge scientists are working on atomic fission. But there are consequences for the men who are affected by it. Hiroshima also causes mixed personal reactions.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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About the Author

C.P. Snow was born in Leicester, on 15 October 1905. He was educated from age 11 at Alderman Newton's School for boys where he excelled in most subjects, enjoying a reputation for an astounding memory. In 1923 he gained an external scholarship in science at London University, whilst working as a laboratory assistant at Newton's to gain the necessary practical experience, because Leicester University, as it was to become, had no chemistry or physics departments at that time. Having achieved a first class degree, followed by a Master of Science he won a studentship in 1928 which he used to research at the famous Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. Snow went on to become a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1930 where he also served as a tutor, but his position became increasingly titular as he branched into other areas of activity. In 1934, he began to publish scientific articles in Nature, and then The Spectator before becoming editor of the journal Discovery in 1937. However, he was also writing fiction during this period and in 1940 'Strangers and Brothers' was published. This was the first of eleven novels in the series and was later renamed 'George Passant' when 'Strangers and Brothers' was used to denote the series itself. Discovery became a casualty of the war, closing in 1940. However, by this time Snow was already involved with the Royal Society, who had organised a group to specifically use British scientific talent operating under the auspices of the Ministry of Labour. He served as the Ministry's technical director from 1940 to 1944. After the war, Snow became a civil service commissioner responsible for recruiting scientists to work for the government. He also returned to writing, continuing the Strangers and Brothers series of novels. 'The Light and the Dark' was published in 1947, followed by 'Time of Hope' in 1949, and perhaps the most famous and popular of them all, 'The Masters', in 1951. He planned to finish the cycle within five years, but the final novel 'Last Things' wasn't published until 1970. He married the novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson in 1950 and they had one son, Philip, in 1952. Snow was knighted in 1957 and became a life peer in 1964, taking the title Baron Snow of the City Leicester. He also joined Harold Wilson's first government as Parliamentary Secretary to the new Minister of Technology. When the department ceased to exist in 1966 he became a vociferous back-bencher in the House of Lords. After finishing the Strang --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 311 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (June 1954)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684718960
• ISBN-13: 978-0684718965
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,312,569 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Agoraphobia, April 29, 2007

By 

Mary E. Sibley (Carneys Point, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The New Men (Strangers and Brothers) (Paperback)

In 1939 Lewis and his brother Martin, nine years younger, argue over whether Martin's anticipated marriage to Irene is a good career move. In the course of the argument Martin mentions the fission affair. The war having begun, Lewis is now employed as a temporary civil servant in the ministry of Thomas Bevill. The permanent secretary there is Hector Rose. Lewis is able to place his brother in the fission program at Barford. Walter Luke, Lewis's friend, is also there, in addition to Kurt Puchwein, a German refugee, Mounteney, an older man and Nobel Prize recipient. Several of the sientists involved are Communist sympathizers. In the initial arrangement of the enterprise there was an underestimate of the men, time, and materials required to achieve the goals set for it.

After the Americans join the war and several of the scientists are sent to America, Walter Luke pushes for support for his scheme of producting heavy water. The minister, Thomas Bevill, decides to support Luke's proposal. In the first attempt there is failure. Additional government backing is received, (it is by no means a sure thing), and success follows failure. Minute amounts of uranium are being changed to plutonium. Luke and another worker get radiation sickness as a result of the Barford experiments.

In 1945 one of the scientists returns from America, Los Alamos, to announce a bomb has been developed. The news causes Martin and Luke desolating disappointment. Francis Getliffe and another English scientist travel to America to protest the use of the bomb. The next thing that Lewis knows is that the bomb has been detonated. The reaction he discerns, of the people in the pubs, is fear. Following the use of a bomb at Nagasaki, the news of Hiroshima causes dismay to everyone. The scientists assumed that Nagasaki, the plutonium bomb, had been dropped as an experiment.

Security agents came to believe that an English-born atomic scientist has been providing information to the Russians. After another scientist is arrested, Martin is able to wear-down the British-born suspect because he has worked with him, side-by-side. Even the hardiest people, it seems, are subject to agoraphobia, a sense of extreme isolation, loneliness.

In this novel the series title, STRANGERS AND BROTHERS, comes into play. Lewis and his brother Martin have a bitter quarrel. In the end the younger brother plots his course to get out from under the influence of the older brother. Distrusting ideology, (this was written in the fifties), Martin decides to pursue pure science in an academic setting. He gives up power. C.P. Snow is particularly adroit, Proustian, in this volume.