Beach Haven

​Bibliography
Rumsfeld, Donald. 2018. When the Center Held: Gerald Ford and the Rescue of the American Presidency. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, New Delhi: Free Press.

Review by Michael Beach

As one might surmise by the title, this book is Donald Rumsfeld’s homage to Gerald Ford. When I first saw the title, being this was likely a political book, I assumed ‘the center’ was a reference to a centrist political position. That was an incorrect assumption. Gerald Ford played college football in Michigan in his younger days. His position was that of the center. This player hikes the ball to the quarterback, then holds the line of large opponents attempting to get past him to tackle the quarterback.

Rumsfeld recounts Ford’s lifetime of service in the military and in politics. He describes his calm demeaner and plain speaking that some took as weakness, but for Rumsfeld, political players in Ford’s day mistakenly underestimated him.

The culmination of the book, and Gerald Ford’s political career, was about his service as vice-president to Richard Nixon. Ford was not the first vice-president to Nixon. He replaced a scandal-ridden Spiro Agnew. This meant that Gerald Ford was not elected to the position. Nixon also made it clear to Ford that he was not his first pick to replace Agnew. After taking office, the Watergate scandal became widely known and led to Nixon’s resignation. Ford found himself moving from an unelected vice-president, to an unelected president.

One of his first acts was to pardon President Nixon. Rumsfeld recounts the Ford administration policies and the historical fallout. Then he reviews the election where Ford actually ran but lost to Jimmy Carter. Rumsfeld recounts likely reasons for Carter’s win. His obvious assumption is that Ford suffered from guilt by his association with Nixon.

Like any political history work, one should consider the perspective of the author who was a Ford administration insider. He also later served with President George W. Bush.  Despite some reflexive influence on the part of Rumsfeld, for those of us who remember the period, the book rings true. 

Bibliography
Rohde, Joy. 2013. Armed with Expertise: The Militarization of American Social Research During the Cold War. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press.
 
In this work, Joy Rohde begins discussing a relatively new tool in the military arsenal called the Human Terrain System (HTS). Essentially, HTS includes social scientists who are familiar with local social factors in war zones who advise in-field troops and commanders. Rohde begins discussing it’s use in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Another example of HTS researchers Rohde discusses are those “behind the front lines in the War on Terror” (Rohde 2013, 1). She notes how one of the goals of HTS participants is to encourage soldiers to “see the world through the eyes of the people affected” so perhaps they could somewhat “demilitarize the military” (Ibid.). As it turns out, many critics of HTS argue the opposite. This approach, some social scientists point out, is militarizing the researchers instead.

The military funded much of this research through the Special Operations Research Office (SORO) created by the Office of the Chief of Psychological Warfare. After setting up this tension and noting some of the major participants, Rohde goes on to offer a historical view of the roots of psychological warfare research dating back to the 1950s and 1960s during the height of the Cold War between the United States and Western allies in conflict with the Soviet Union and it’s sphere of influence.

Among other conclusions, Joy Rohde asserts that “much of the critical focus on contracting for the post-9/11 environment focuses on the dangers of privatization, not on those of militarization” (Rohde 2013, 155). Perhaps the same could be said about the military itself. Rohde notes that if it’s true that Americans are “devoted to their image of the nation as a global superpower” (Rohde 2013, 156), then militarization of social research will “last as long as Americans continue to measure their national greatness by their global might” (Ibid.).
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Bibliography
Hawking, Stephen. 2017. A Brief History of Time. New York: Bantam Books.

Review by Michael Beach
 
Stephen Hawking is a well-known astrophysicist, so much so that a novice like me has heard of him. Yes, he was connected to the popular TV show The Big Bang Theory, but I had heard of him long before then. This book is a treatise on the best scientific thinking about the cosmos distilled into more palatable language for the average reader.

Each chapter tackles somewhat ticklish unresolved topics such as the latest descriptions of the universe, the relationship between space and time, the uncertainty principle, and the elementary particles and forces of nature. Whether discussing black holes, the origin of the universe, or worm hole travel, Hawking includes what ‘we’ humans think and what we don’t know. He peppers these heavy topics from well placed humor.

The original version of the book was published in 1988. This third version incorporates ‘new material’ including some short descriptions about the theoretical scientific contributions of Albert Einstein, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton. For me the topics Hawking discusses are fascinating. His approach is thoughtful and clear.  
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