New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

Why do we keep trying to solve poverty with technology? What makes us feel that we need to learn to code--or else? In The Promise of Access: Technology, Inequality, and the Political Economy of Hope (MIT Press, 2021), Daniel Greene argues that the problem of poverty became a problem of technology in order to manage the contradictions of a changing economy. Greene shows how the digital divide emerged as a policy problem and why simple technological solutions to complex social issues continue to appeal to politicians and professionals who should (and often do) know better.Patrick Sheehan is a PhD student in Sociology at UT Austin studying work and careers in the digital economy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Cinderella stories captured the imagination of girls in the 1950s, when dreams of meeting the right man could seem like a happy ending, a solution to life's problems. But over the next fifty years women's lives were transformed, not by the magic wand of a fairy godmother, nor by marrying princes, but by education, work, birth control--and feminism. However, while widening opportunities for women were seen as progress, feminists were regularly caricatured as man-haters, cast in the role of ugly sisters, witches or wicked fairies in the fairy-tale.Carol Dyhouse's new book Love Lives: From Cinderella to Frozen (Oxford UP, 2021) is about the reshaping of women's lives, loves and dreams since 1950, the year in which Walt Disney's film Cinderella gave expression to popular ideas of romance, and at a time when marriage was a major determinant of female life chances and teenage girls dreamed of Mr Right and happy endings. It ends with the runaway success of Disney's Frozen, in 2013--a film with relevance to very different times. Along the way, it illuminates how women's expectations and emotional landscapes have shifted, asking bold questions about how women's lives have been transformed since 1950. How have women's changing life experiences been mirrored in new expectations about marriage, intimacy, and family life? How have new forms of independence through education and work, and greater control over childbearing, altered women's life ambitions? And were feminists right to believe that sexual equality would improve relationships between men and women?Marshall Poe is the founder and editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Mary Brazelton’s new book, Mass Vaccination: Citizens’ Bodies and State Power in Modern China (Cornell UP, 2019) could hardly be more timely. During the Covid-19 pandemic, China was in the headlines of Euro-American media as the site of the first cases of the disease. China is also centerstage in Brazelton’s insightful, antiracist book—not as a source of disease but as the source of an effective and pervasive global public health strategy that other nations during the Covid-19 pandemic have strained to implement: mass vaccination.As a historian of modern China and a historian of medicine, Brazelton offers a trustworthy and well-documented account of the National Epidemic Prevention Board and its successor agencies during the republic’s war-torn twentieth century. The location—and relocation—of the Board and its refugee scientists was decisive, Brazelton argues. During World War II and Japanese occupation (1937-45), the Board’s labs and scientists decamped from China’s coastal cities to the mountainous southwest borderland of Yunnan—exactly because the area was rugged, sparsely populated, and far from China’s urban hubs. In Yunnan, scientists were not isolated, but rather set within an idiosyncratic health infrastructure and network of longstanding political rivals vying for sway in the region—including France to the south, UK to the east, the League of Nations in the capital, and everywhere indigenous rulers, who retained local authority as the Nationalist Party struggled to consolidate power in the early years of the republic. The distinctive geography, epidemiology, and communities of health knowledge in Yunnan channeled the Board’s research and strategies. This regional system, developed under the banner of the national Board, became the blueprint for public health interventions for the People’s Republic of China after the Communist Revolution (1949). In the 1970s because of its repressive practices, China was officially excluded from the global health community, which was dominated by Europe and the US under the World Health Organization. Yet, China’s program of mass vaccination and strategy of universal primary care directly informed practices of new and nonaligned countries.Brazelton’s important new book addresses a classic puzzle of biopolitics in the history of science and medicine: when and why did governing regimes build public health programs that prioritized changing people’s behaviors and values (sanitation, hygiene; mask wearing, social distancing) rather than changing people’s health with quick technical fixes—such as vaccination.The interview refers to the image on the book’s cover (also p130) and to the important, related work of Alicia Altorfer-Ong, Ruth Rogawski, and the Connecting Three Worlds project. The conversation was a collective interview by Vanderbilt students in Laura Stark’s course, American Medicine & the World.Laura Stark is Associate Professor at Vanderbilt University’s Center for Medicine, Health, and Society, and Associate Editor of the journal History & Theory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Elise K. Burton’s important book, Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity (Stanford University Press, 2021), documents how race and nation became fused in concept and in political practice. Over the past century, nation-building and race-making became interdependent through the sciences of heredity and their uses during wartimes and their aftermaths. The book provincializes Euro-American histories of science by centering the intrepid and non-innocent scientists from land along the eastern coastline of the Mediterranean Sea (often called by the imperial name of “Middle East”)—and their transnational networks. The book tracks how scientists’ reputations, access to resources, and interpretations of data shifted from the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the repackaged race science around World War II, the 1967 Six-Day War, and the lingering state-backed violence of the present day. The sciences of heredity—including physical anthropology and medical genetics—have continued to be used to justify violence and territorial occupation, as much as humanitarian “resettlement” programs, storage of biospecimen, and building of research infrastructures for a cosmopolitan science. Today, “the anti-racist, progressive discourses surrounding contemporary human genome projects have so far been unable to overcome the territorial regimes and ethnic concepts produced by a century of conflict,” Burton writes, because “nationalism is sustained by particular practices of human genetics research—specifically, the need to describe human populations according to geography and ancestral history, coinciding with the two major constituent elements of the nation-state paradigm.”The interview refers to the important, related work of Jenny Bangham, Emma Kowal, Joanna Radin, Gayle Rubin, and Kim TallBear. The conversation was a collective interview by Vanderbilt Master’s students in Laura Stark’s seminar, Critical Bioethics: Jazmyn Ayers, Kell Coney, Anyssa Francis, Caroline Goodman, Lily Jaremski, Natalie Jones, Ashley Mullen, Enna Pehadzic, Olivia Post, Karrie Raymond, Christina Rosca, Cecile Sahel, Chad Smith, and McKenzie Yates. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

For more than a hundred years, Britain’s signals intelligence agency, GCHQ, has played a central role in the conduct of British statecraft. But the organization has traditionally operated from the shadows, leaving many questions about its internal operations and its impact on policy.Now, the story of GCHQ can be told with greater clarity: A few years ago, GCHQ opened parts of its archive to John Ferris, a Professor of History at the University of Calgary, and asked him to write an authoritative history of the intelligence agency. The result is Ferris’s monumental new book, Behind the Enigma: The Authorized History of GCHQ, Britain’s Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020).On this episode, I talk with Professor Ferris about the origins of British signals intelligence, its impact on British policy in World War I and World War II, the type of people who have filled the organization’s ranks over time, and how GCHQ is adapting to the “second age” of computerized signals intelligence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Math circles defy simple narratives. The model was introduced a century ago, and is taking off in the present day thanks in part to its congruence with cutting-edge research in mathematics education. It is a modern approach to teaching—or facilitation—that resonates and finds mutual reinforcement with traditional practices and cultural preservation efforts. A wide range of math circle resources have become available for interested instructors, including the MSRI Math Circles Library, now in its 14th year of publication by the AMS.I was excited to talk with three editors and contributors to a recent volume in the series, Inspiring Mathematics: Lessons from the Navajo Nation Math Circles (American Mathematical, 2019). Drs. Dave Auckly, Amanda Serenevy, and Henry Fowler have been instrumental to the Navajo Nation Math Circles Project, along with co-editors Tatiana Shubin and Bob Klein and a broader contact and support network. Their book showcases scripts developed and facilitated in Navajo Nation, including an introduction to modular arithmetic through bean bag tossing, prefix sorting in the guise of pancake flipping, and a tactile use of limiting behavior to folding a necktie. We discussed the origin and expansion of math circles, their potential to indigenous mathematics educators and students, and the content of and stories behind a selection of the scripts.Dr. Fowler's foreword and the editors' introduction situate the math circles movement and the Navajo Nation Math Circles Project in history, geography, and culture. Each script begins with a (minimal!) list of the necessary materials and a student handout that invites explorations with them. A short survey of connections to deeper mathematics precedes each handout, and each is followed by an extensive teacher's guide with (illustrative) solutions and presentation suggestions. The scripts vary in complexity and are suitable for student- and teacher-focused math circles. I hope the text becomes widely adopted for science-based and culturally conscious mathematics education and helps introduce others like myself to the greater math circles project.Suggested companion works:-James Tanton-The Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival-Gordon Hamilton and Lora Saarnio, MathPickle-Robert Kaplan and Ellen Kaplan, Out of the Labyrinth: Setting Mathematics Free-Rachel and Rodi Steinig, Math RenaissanceDave Auckly is a research mathematician at Kansas State University and Co-founder and Director of the Navajo Nation Math Circles Project. Amanda Serenevy is Co-founder and Director of the Riverbend Community Math Center. Henry Fowler is Associate Professor of Mathematics at Navajo Technical University and Co-director of the Navajo Nation Math Circles Project. Cory Brunson is a Research Assistant Professor at the Laboratory for Systems Medicine at the University of Florida. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

A sadist. A madman. A sociopath seduced by the terrible allure of nuclear weapons. These are but a few of the pejoratives commonly used to describe United States Air Force General Thomas S. Power, Commander-in-Chief of Strategic Air Command (SAC) from 1957 to 1964. Power’s remit as CinCSAC was twofold: deter the Soviet Union from launching a nuclear first strike on the United States and plan to unleash Armageddon if they did. Neither was easily achieved. Effective deterrence hinged upon the actual possession of qualitatively superior weapons systems combined with the perception that the United States was willing to use them. Loosing the nuclear dogs of war, in turn, depended on the exacting coordination of those weapons systems under combat conditions. Further complicating matters was the incredible compression of time and space brought on by the advent of new delivery systems like the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). SAC's mission was truly a Gordian Knot—one Power was determined to cut. Power approached the problem with an alacrity that transformed SAC into a formidable nuclear instrument, but which simultaneously earned him a less than flattering reputation. Within the Kennedy administration and among many members of the media, Power was seen as fatally unhinged, obsessed with nuclear weapons, violently anti-communist, and liable to start a nuclear war with the Soviets of his own volition. Whether accurate or not, this view dominated popular and historiographical appraisals of Power for the better part of seven decades.In To Rule the Skies: General Thomas S. Power and the Rise of Strategic Air Command in the Cold War (US Naval Institute Press, 2021), historian Brent Ziarnick takes aim at this mainstream historiographic narrative. Telling in detail for the first time the story of Power’s personal and professional life, Ziarnick refocuses our attention away from the hyperbole and onto Power’s substantive contributions to the development of America’s strategic air and aerospace capability.Brent D. Ziarnick is an assistant professor at the Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. He has been published in Wired, Politico, and The Hill. He is a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy and the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies.Scott Lipkowitz holds a MA in History, with a concentration in military history, and a MLIS, with a concentration in information technology, from Queens College, City University of New York Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Believers: Faith in Human Nature (Norton, 2019) is a scientist's answer to attacks on faith by some well-meaning scientists and philosophers. It is a firm rebuke of the "Four Horsemen"--Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens--known for writing about religion as something irrational and ultimately harmful. Anthropologist Melvin Konner, who was raised as an Orthodox Jew but has lived his adult life without such faith, explores the psychology, development, brain science, evolution, and even genetics of the varied religious impulses we experience as a species.Conceding that faith is not for everyone, he views religious people with a sympathetic eye; his own upbringing, his apprenticeship in the trance-dance religion of the African Bushmen, and his friends and explorations in Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, and other faiths have all shaped his perspective. Faith has always manifested itself in different ways--some revelatory and comforting; some kind and good; some ecumenical and cosmopolitan; some bigoted, coercive, and violent. But the future, Konner argues, will both produce more nonbelievers, and incline the religious among us--holding their own by having larger families--to increasingly reject prejudice and aggression.A colorful weave of personal stories of religious--and irreligious--encounters, as well as new scientific research, Believers shows us that religion does much good as well as undoubted harm, and that for at least a large minority of humanity, the belief in things unseen neither can nor should go away.Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at r.garfinkel@yahoo.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

In his new book Taking Nazi Technology: Allied Exploitation of German Science After the Second World War (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), Douglas O’Reagan describes how the Western Allies gathered teams of experts to scour defeated Germany, seeking industrial secrets and the technical personnel who could explain them. Swarms of investigators invaded Germany's factories and research institutions, seizing or copying all kinds of documents, from patent applications to factory production data to science journals. They questioned, hired, and sometimes even kidnapped hundreds of scientists, engineers, and other technical personnel. They studied technologies from aeronautics to audiotapes, toy making to machine tools, chemicals to carpentry equipment. They took over academic libraries, jealously competed over chemists, and schemed to deny the fruits of German invention to any other land—including that of other Allied nations.Drawing on declassified records, O'Reagan looks at which techniques worked for these very different nations, as well as which failed—and why. Most importantly, he shows why securing this technology, how the Allies did it, and when still matters today. He also argues that these programs did far more than spread German industrial science: they forced businessmen and policymakers around the world to rethink how science and technology fit into diplomacy, business, and society itself.Douglas M. O'Reagan is a historian of technology, industry, and national security. He earned his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.Craig Sorvillo is a PhD candidate in modern European history at the University of Florida. He specializes in Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust. He can be reached at craig.sorvillo@gmail.com or on twitter @craig_sorvillo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Join naturalist and science writer Leigh Calvez on her adventures into science and spirit of animals, as we discuss her two recent books: The Hidden Lives of Owls, and The Breath of the Whale (Sasquatch Books, 2016 and 2019, respectively). Calvez makes the science and research entertaining and accessible, describing the social behavior of owls and whales while exploring the questions about the human-animal connection. Our conversation highlights the impressive resilience and intelligence of the animals we have the pleasure to share the world with, the role of research and intuition in field work studies, in addition to the complexity of ethical decisions we humans must make to ensure and perpetuate a diverse and healthy ecosystem for every creature. Leigh Calvez has worked with whales and dolphins as a scientist, naturalist and nature writer, her work featured in Smithsonian Magazine, High Country News, The Ecologist, Ocean Realm, The Christian Science Monitor, the Seattle Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Bainbridge Island Magazine. She also teaches private writing classes and lives near Seattle, Washington, with her daughter Ellie and their two cats.Sarah (@annotated_sci) is an acquisition editor for an open scholarship publishing platform, a freelance science writer, and loves baking bread. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society