Sally Gregory Kohlstedt and David Kaiser (eds), Science and the American Century: Readings from "Isis"

Abstract

It is always a pleasure to sit and read a well-crafted, thought-provoking article. So much more a pleasure, then, to find fifteen such articles in one place, as is the case with Science and the American Century. The volume gathers together contributions on various aspects of American science (less so technology and medicine) since the 1880s, all of which were published in Isis between 1996 and 2010. Though the contributions are eclectic—ranging widely in subject matter, as well as scale and style of argument—the volume offers a coherent and at times surprising look at some of the topics that have concerned historians of American science over the past ten to twenty years. The editors identify three broad subject areas around which the volume is organised. The first, ‘Nature, Science, and Environmental Perspectives’, includes contributions by Daniel W. Schneider on the interactions of professional science and local labour and knowledge in early ecological research, Philip J. Pauly on the science and politics of non-native species in the early-twentieth century, Michael Rossi on the meanings of authenticity in the construction of natural history models, Paul S. Sutter on environmental knowledge and entomological research in the building of the Panama Canal, and Joshua Blu Buhs on controversies over pesticide use in the late-twentieth century. A second set of articles, ‘Patrons, Politics, and the Physical Sciences’, includes work by Alex Wellerstein on the patenting of nuclear weapons by the US government, David Kaiser on political activism and pedagogical practice in post-war physics, W. Patrick McCray on the participation of amateur astronomers in the International Geophysical Year, Scott G. Knowles and Stuart W. Leslie on the architectural design of post-war corporate research laboratories, and Catherine Westfall on medium-scale physics and the need for alternate histories of Big Science. The third section, ‘Social Policies, Scientific Practice, and the Law’, is more motley in its composition, with articles by Ellen Herman on scientific adoption in the early-to-mid-twentieth century, John P. Jackson, Jr. on the role of social science in legal battles against discrimination in the 1940s, David S. Jones on controversies over cardiac surgery and clinical trials in the late-twentieth century, Sally Smith Hughes on the patenting of recombinant DNA technology, and Brianna Rego on the tobacco industry and research into the hazards of polonium in cigarettes.