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

by Ernest Volkman (Author) "Come, I will tell you of the ills of the infantryman," the anonymous soldier of the Egyptian Empire dictated to a scribe somewhere around 1400..." (more)
Key Phrases: scientific intelligence teams, wonder weapon, United States, Soviet Union, Lang Chi (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"…this compelling, frightening and important book makes it clear…" -- Focus, October 2002

Review
"...this compelling, frightening and important book makes it clear..." (Focus, October 2002)

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1st edition (March 29, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471410071
• ISBN-13: 978-0471410072
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #532,789 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good overview!, October 18, 2002

By	ericatdallas "ericatdallas" (Dallas, Texas USA) - See all my reviews

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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Well-written, too simplistic, schizophrenic, August 4, 2002

By	Douglas B. Moran "Computer+History+Politics" (Palo Alto, CA USA) - See all my reviews

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.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disjointed, September 1, 2002

By	Ronald T. Jones (Chicago, Illinois United States) - See all my reviews

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.