Customer Reviews

Science Goes to War: The Search for the Ultimate Weapon--from Greek Fire to Star Wars

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Certain topics demand a broad scope, particularly topics dealing with warfare and military/weapons development over the span of thousands of years. Science Goes to War, by Ernest Volkman, is an interesting book, but ultimately a shadow of what it could have become had it not been constrained within a largely Eurocentric framework. Worse yet, there are a number of factual errors and omissions which sink the book further, thus threatening its credibility as a reliable source of information on the subject. Science Goes to War is a study of how science has been coopted through the ages to serve the interests of the State. And the State's primary desire has always been new and more destructive weapons which scientists or precursors to scientists have caused to come into fruition through their research. It's unfortunate that the Chinese could not have been included in this study other than to point out how and why they fell behind the Europeans in science and technolgy. Because at various periods in their history, the Chinese showed a great penchant for inventiveness and innovation in the area of weapons technolgy. The Warring States Period is instructive of how chronic warfare in early China led to profound upgrades not only in weaponry but tactics. Considerable Chinese R&D had to have gone into these developments, yet the author misses a grand opportunity to highlight them. The same for India, Africa and pre-Columbian America. What a contribution to his readership the author would have made had he discussed how European raiders on the African coast suffered losses at the hands of Africans armed with poison arrows, and how those poisons were developed by nameless African researchers. This was a form of chemical and biological warfare waged by Africans, because the nature of the poisons they used could be plant or bio-based. The errors in this book range from tiny to monumental. The author states that the English had no knights at the Battle of Agincourt when in fact they did. He displays a curious ignorance about the extent of China's use of gunpowder in warfare prior to the Mongol invasions, and most staggering of all is his erroneous depiction of Pizzaro's encounter with the Incas. According to the book, the Incas, arrayed in battle formation, attacked the Spaniards, who in turn defeated them. In fact, the Incas did not attack first. Both sides were not arrayed facing each other in a fair pre-battle setting. What transpired was a sneak attack by Spanish horsemen and infantry against lightly armed or unarmed soldiers escorting the Inca emperor to meet with Pizzaro. What transpired was a massacre. Volkman gives much attention to the English longbow, while neglecting to eloborate upon the capacities of the composite bow, a weapon he cursorily mentions. The Mongols made maximum use of this bow, which had a heavier pull and greater range than the English longbow. Even more odd is his overlooking of the Vikings, whose ships were marvels of naval technology during that era. The later chapters of the book confers a slight redemptiveness to the entire work in the author's effective illustration of the horrific consequences of an unfettered collusion between science and the State. Science Goes to War could have been much greater in scope had the author shown the ambition to cover ground rarely covered in military history. Instead, this work is average at best.

Absolutely one of the best, most accurate, well-documented, and organized books on the subject of science being "the bringer of evil; the bringer of life." It isn't lite reading, but the knowledge gained from its pages will affect the way you think about the risks and benefits of technology forever. Be strong, be brave, be afraid.

I bought this book because I had read several enthusiastic reviews. It started out as a fast, fun read, but quickly became tiresome and repetitive, and then just plain annoying.

Volkman forces history into a standard template: a political entity has a military problem and solves it by applying science, which is done by creating an R&D operation in which scientists abandon "pure" science to create deadly weapons. The same template is applied to everyone from the ancient Assyrians and modern states. History is grossly oversimplied and some events (e.g., the Battle of Agincourt) are warped beyond recognition to fit nicely into Volkman's thesis.

The book's abstract is highly misleading: the book does not "examine":
(1) "the moral dilemmas" - it basically *asserts* (at virtually every juncture) that scientists prostitute themselves when they work on weapons. The last 25-30% could largely be retitled "scientists as war criminals".
(2) "knotty technological problems" - its treatment is only somewhat better than you would encounter in a bland public high school history book. Too often, solutions seem to just magically appear.
(3) "pragmatic necessities ..." - ditto.

The first five chapters have a fast-paced, enthusiastic style and might be useful for piquing a student's interest into looking more deeply into some of the topics here. However, for anyone who already has even a modest background in this area, this book offers little or nothing in the way of insights or alternate perspectives.

Volkman seemed to go in circles when making his point. It seemed very repetitive, at times, like a 5th grader writing his first report and trying to fill up space.

For those looking for an indepth analysis of the history of science and warfare, you will be very disappointed. However, if you are just curious of how science has influenced our world, you will find this an easy book to read and understand.

I know my review kind of swings both ways. But to me, the book's writing swings back and forth between good and bad. I'm pleased with the content but not so pleased with the author's writing ability.

This was however, the most informative and easy to read book on the subject I've seen yet.

This is a lively introduction to a huge topic that inevitably oversimplifies. Some errors (as pointed out by other reviewers) come from the tunnel vision of an author determined to fit the facts into his Eurocentric view of history. But a glance at his list of sources suggests the cause of many inaccuracies: they are almost all secondary sources. So his starting points are mostly other people's interpretations of the primary sources. For example, on page 48 he follows most historians in crediting the Goths in the 8th Century with the invention of heavy cavalry, using saddles and stirrups. But the Sarmatian heavy cavalry bested Roman legions for years, using tactics similar to those of medieval knights against infantry. And on page 45, he says that medieval armor weighed "nearly 270 pounds" so that knights had to be hoisted onto their horses; whereas the armor was actually about as heavy as a large backpack, and re-enactors of medieval jousts have no trouble mounting their horses wearing accurate reproductions of medieval armor.

His account of the battle of Agincourt is an example of his simplifications, giving the impression that the English longbow alone made a French defeat inevitable. In fact, the one-sided outcome resulted from disciplined English tactics combined with French mistakes, including the French choice of a battlefield hemmed in by forest on both sides, which prevented them from flanking or circling the much smaller English army. King Henry had his army advance to within bow shot of the French lines, and then plant sharpened stakes in the muddy ground to impale any French horses that reached them. The impatient French knights (who had no effective, unified command) blocked their own crossbow men, and charged into a field so muddy that many of them foundered and drowned when they were trampled down. Had the French chosen a more open battlefield, used their crossbow men (Italian mercenaries) effectively, and been more disciplined, the outcome might have been very different.

Nevertheless, the book does tell a good (though biased) story. And despite its occasional errors, it makes some interesting connections, and includes many fascinating details, such as the probable composition of Greek fire and the impact (in foot pounds) of an arrow driven by an English long bow. Readers who already know some of the history may garner some new insights even as they relish the chance to correct the author's errors.

This was a very interesting book. full of factual information. It studys the whole world in leangthy process not just the US. Says a lot about the A bomb as far back as Da Vinci.

This book makes a number of absurd mistakes - sometimes even getting things exactly backwards - which someone actually familiar with the particular topic (such as radar) would find laughable.

The topic is quite interesting and relevant considering our current situation. The early part of the book is the most gripping, but I have to say that the chapters dealing with the 20th Century were a big let down. Volkman is correct in saying only a couple of people left the Manhatten project, but he does not mention that many scientists refused to work on the project. The data is skewed to represent the thesis of author, but it would have been nice to read about some of the counter arguments, such as the early peace movement among scientists in the 16th Century. It would have been notable if more effort could have been made towards some of the scientist peace movement successes (such as the ban on some areas of biological research during the 1970s). There are however, lots of little nuggets of information that keep the readers' interest until the end. Inside this book, there is a great one waiting to come out. Perhaps in a later edition.....