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A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard…
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A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon (2009 original; edición 2009)

por Neil Sheehan (Autor), Robertson Dean (Reader)

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3671869,333 (3.92)13
From Sheehan, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic "A Bright Shining Lie," comes the never-before-told story of the nuclear arms race that changed history--and of the visionary American Air Force officer Bernard Schriever, who led the high-stakes effort with the ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missiles) program.… (más)
Miembro:AsYouKnow_Bob
Título:A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon
Autores:Neil Sheehan (Autor)
Otros autores:Robertson Dean (Reader)
Información:Random House Audio (2009), Edition: Unabridged
Colecciones:Tu biblioteca, Audiobooks
Valoración:
Etiquetas:engineering, atomic war, aeronautics, history, Cold War, the 50s, 20th Century, arms race, space race, American history, book on CD, SCPL - Whitney Room, ex-library, 2021

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A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon por Neil Sheehan (2009)

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» Ver también 13 menciones

Mostrando 1-5 de 19 (siguiente | mostrar todos)
Full on USA propaganda detected. ( )
  dahoon | Mar 26, 2020 |
Neal Sheehan ties the history of the Cold War to his biography of the Air Force officer in charge of developing the ICBM. As biography, it didn't really work for me but as history, this is a great survey of the Cold War, its causes and consequences. I especially like his focus on the politics of defense spending and on Eisenhower's concerns about defense versus social spending. ( )
  nmele | Apr 6, 2013 |
Sheehan started out to write a history of the Cold War and its attendant arms race and then came across the story of Bernard Schriever, a man largely forgotten though he arguably played as large a role in space development - manned and unmanned, military and civilian - as many more celebrated figures such as his fellow German immigrant Werner von Braun (though Schriever immigrated when he was six). Fortunately, many of the major figures were still alive to interview when Sheehan started his project in 1993, and their personal recollections - as well as the traditional sources of the historian like other books and government documents - make this story of how America's intercontinental ballistic missiles were developed fascinating.

What Schriever contributed to that task was not so much technical expertise - though he did have formal training as an engineer - but a knack for human engineering, for finding and leading and retaining the right people in his quest to develop the ultimate deterrent. His people developed new rocket fuels, scrapped von Braun's designs for missile bodies, retooled Air Force procurement policies, developed new methods of project management and design, convinced a president to make their job the highest national priority, and, in one instance, produced fake intelligence to overcome Pentagon inertia. Schriever's leadership also laid the groundwork for the manned exploration of space by NASA - literally in the development of Cape Canaveral

Sheehan strikes about the right balance in going when giving the details of all these innovations - enough to get a sense of their significance and not a boring surplus. (Though there are bits of over explanation. For instance, did Sheehan or an editor really think we needed a definition of concrete?) Along the way, Sheehan sort of sneaks in an abbreviated version of his original plan. He covers not only major events of the Cold War like the Berlin Airlift and Cuban Missile Crisis but the deployment of intermediate range nuclear missiles in England and Turkey as well as some of the development of nuclear warheads small enough to put on those missiles. Sheehan makes all of his characters interesting and tries to put them in their historical context. For instance, though he is unkind to the later Curtis LeMay, he covers his early courage and contribution to the strategy of airpower.

And, while he sometimes pulls away from Schriever to talk about larger historical events or other figures, we still learn why the American Air Force never forgot Schriever and gave him its first Space Command badge. By the time the book ends with Schriever's 2005 death, we know why he was buried with the military's highest honors.

However, when he talks about the larger context of the Cold War, particularly Soviet intentions and aggression, Sheehan is less convincing. Sheehan's contention that Stalin's Russia was not bent on world conquest seems hard to square with a regime which ordered NKVD death squads into Spain, promoted subversion through the Comintern, and tried to subvert local communist movements. And, even if he had some notion of the capitalist West falling on its own or engaging in civil war, are we really to believe that the USSR wouldn't have taken advantage of a communist Western Europe after WWII - something Sheehan acknowledges was a possibility?

Still, despite Sheehan's unconvincing portrayal of the threat the USSR posed, this is still a story of a great, unsung American and his contribution to not only our security but the fabric of our modern life. ( )
  RandyStafford | Feb 22, 2012 |
To some extent the book's title is misleading. While Bernard Schriever features prominently in the book, his life is not quite the same organizing role for the history being told, as was the case in Sheehan's Bright Shining Lie. That having been said, the writing is of high quality and the historical drama is well described. The book reads easily and contains a wealth of fascinating characters.

I came away feeling ambivalent about what I felt to be the author's historical judgment. He seemed to think that the development of nuclear ICBMs was inevitable, and it was therefore a good thing that both the US and the USSR developed them so as to bring about the deterrence of Mutually Assured Destruction. That is, the missile competition "worked" to end the Cold War. But at what a price! --the bankruptcy of the USSR (political, economic, and spiritual), and the political and economic dominance of the military-industrial complex in the US, with it concomitant skewed economic priorities. And we still have the nuclear warheads and the nut cases who want to use them, which is a major threat to the future of the world. It's a tribute to the honesty of the book that it provokes thinking along these lines.

There are photographs from the life of Schriever, as well as other personages. There are also meticulous notes, bibliography, and and index. Perhaps the subtitle of the book should be something like "the US nuclear missile project" ( )
  Wheatland | Feb 13, 2011 |
Esta reseña ha sido escrita por los Primeros Reseñadores de LibraryThing.
Like 'A Bright Shining Lie' before it, Sheehan is able to capture and explore the nuances of 'political' wars by exploring the biography of one who fought. His skills as a journalist and biographer allow Sheehan to draft some of the finest war histories of the 20th century. ( )
  darwin.8u | Oct 4, 2010 |
Mostrando 1-5 de 19 (siguiente | mostrar todos)
[A] deeply researched, compulsively readable and important book.
 
The power of "A Bright Shining Lie" came from the mix of Vann's charismatic personality and Sheehan's personal involvement with the Vietnam story over many years; both elements are missing in "A Fiery Peace." Schriever, "the handsomest general in the United States Air Force," who died in 2005, comes across as an exceptional administrator almost colorless in his rectitude.

That said, Sheehan does an excellent job of describing, in terms that a layman can follow, the technical challenges involved in developing an ICBM and how they were overcome.
 
If you think that the story of making nuclear-warhead rockets could appeal only to geeks and military historians, think again. The history of how the Cold War started and developed in its early phases is a gripping one, and the personal stories of the men who -- in effect -- fought the Cold War and kept its fiery peace, is every bit as gripping.
 
If the [book] lacks some of the passion and existential profundity that marked "A Bright And Shining Lie," it is nonetheless an important contribution to our understanding of those decades when the United States and Soviet Union held each other -- and the world -- in a balance of terror.
añadido por Shortride | editarLos Angeles Times, Tim Rutten (Sep 23, 2009)
 
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For Susan - who else?
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(Foreword) When the Space Age is mentioned, most people think of Sputnik, the launching into orbit of the first man-made satellite by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957, or the race between Russia and the United States to land men on the moon.
(Prologue) General Henry Harley Arnold, known as "Hap" because of his unusual smile, was in a hurry in January 1946.
The men in the Schriever family were venturesome types who immigrated to America to better themselves or took to the sea.
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From Sheehan, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic "A Bright Shining Lie," comes the never-before-told story of the nuclear arms race that changed history--and of the visionary American Air Force officer Bernard Schriever, who led the high-stakes effort with the ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missiles) program.

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