Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War, Hugh Gusterson, MA '86, PhD '92, University of California Press, 1996; $39.95 (cultural anthropology).
Anthropologists usually do their fieldwork among distant peoples with exotic customs. Gusterson brought this stranger-in-a-strange-land mentality to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the late '80s. He spent two years studying the scientists and researchers who do the top-secret work of designing nuclear weapons. A former anti-nuclear activist, the MIT anthropologist found himself surprisingly comfortable among the PhDs of Livermore. The scientists and the protester, it turns out, have much in common. Using intimate interviews, Gusterson reveals how the scientists become socialized through job interviews, attending nuclear tests, churchgoing and even sharing jokes. One of Gusterson's favorites: A picture of a nuclear-tipped missile arcing toward the Soviet Union with a caption that reads, "When you care enough to send the very best."
Animal Hospital, Stephen Sawicki, MA '81, Chicago Review Press, 1996; $22 (veterinary medicine).
Renowned as one of the nation's premier animal hospitals, Angell Memorial over the years has ministered to some celebrity patients: Elvis's chow chow, Tracy Chapman's dachshund, Stephen King's Welsh corgi. Its staff--which includes an oncologist, a cardiologist, a gastroenterologist and a neurologist--treats 45,000 pets annually. In this chronicle of the year he spent hanging around the Boston facility, journalist Sawicki details the dramatic interplay among the doctors, pets and their human partners. He tells of King, a German shepherd who took four bullets chasing an armed robber out a second-story window; the homeless man who brought in his cat and gave their address as "under the 5th Street bridge"; and the baby seal whose stomach contained 287 coins totaling $8.37 because zoo visitors treated its pool as a wishing well.
Code 211 Blue, Joseph McNamara, research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Fawcett Gold Medal, 1996; $5.99 (fiction).
For narcotics cop Kevin McKay, it was just another stakeout in San Francisco's war on drugs. A strung-out heroin addict offers up his dealer in exchange for freedom. When McKay finds the dealer, the man has been beaten and robbed. Enquiries lead McKay to his own lieutenant, but his accusations fall on deaf ears. McKay finds himself transferred out of narcotics and placed on a serial rape case. He scours the city from Chinatown to the Tenderloin looking for a suspect who is known only as Ski Mask. In the process of telling this tale, former San Jose police chief McNamara manages to indict the federal government's war against drugs and also paints a disturbing picture of police corruption as his hero McKay discovers that the most dangerous criminals of all are those who carry a badge.
Betrayal of Science and Reason: How Anti-Environmental Rhetoric Threatens Our Future, Paul R. Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies, and Anne H.Ehrlich, senior research scientist in biological sciences, Island, 1996; $24.95 (science/environment).
Have you read lately that global warming and acid rain are not serious threats to humanity? That the risks posed by toxic substances are vastly exaggerated? Or that population growth does not cause environmental damage and may even be beneficial? The Ehrlichs heard these assertions once too often and decided to write a book refuting what they regard as anti-science rhetoric. From Rush Limbaugh to Julian Simon, the authors single out those they believe are the purveyors of environmental disinformation. Then they seek to dismantle their assertions by presenting the opposing views of some of the world's most respected scientists.
