A Path Where No Man Thought
2 journalers for this copy...
Registered for the Burnside Community Fun Day Bookcrossing Stand.
Well, it did make it onto the bookcrossing stand at the Community Fun Day, but only for a few seconds, before it mysteriously fell off the table and into my bag...
Carl Sagan is one of my all-time heroes, and I've been wanting to read this book for years. gwilk has graciously allowed me to add it to my permanent collection.
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Carl Sagan is one of my all-time heroes, and I've been wanting to read this book for years. gwilk has graciously allowed me to add it to my permanent collection.
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I have really got to stop reading books about large-scale disasters! Last Christmas as I was reading a book about Krakatoa and the tsunami it caused, there was a tsunami in Asia. Now as I'm in the middle of reading about nuclear winter, there's a burning fuel depot casting a pall of black smoke across the South-East of England. Looking at the satellite photos of how far the smoke has spread already provides graphic illustration of the concepts in this book.
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Journal Entry 4 by futurecat from Christchurch, Canterbury New Zealand on Wednesday, December 14, 2005
The concept of nuclear winter is still as scarey today as it was when the TTAPS team first announced their findings. The cold war may be over, but that doesn't mean the stockpiles of nuclear weapons are gone, or that they'll never be used (how much of an excuse would GWB need to start lobbing bombs at the Middle East, for example - another 11 September, perhaps?). And people's memories are short - now that the immediate threat of armageddon is gone, the fear subsides, and the "tactical" use of nuclear weapons once again begins to sound like a reasonable response... I think I should shut up now before I totally depress myself, and get back to reviewing the book...
The first half of the book was fascinating, mainly focussing on the science, and the possible outcomes of a nuclear war. But towards the end of the book there's a seemingly endless string of chapters about military policies in various countries which I found pretty tedious (partly because the power balance in the world has changed so much in the last 20 years that very little of the discussion was still relevant). But that's just my bias - someone else reading the book might find those chapters fascinating and the science stuff boring.
New Zealand gets quite a few mentions - for our nuclear-free policy, and for daring to stand up to the might of America (there's a lovely description in a footnote of the time we were struck off America's list of friendly countries, so that Ronald Reagan refused to acknowledge our ambassador, and Caspar Weinberger even pretended he'd never heard of us - it brought back just how proud I felt of my country at that time that we weren't bowed by America's ire. Forget Anzac Cove, that truely was New Zealand's finest hour.)
With gwilk's permission, this book will stay permanently in my Sagan collection.
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The first half of the book was fascinating, mainly focussing on the science, and the possible outcomes of a nuclear war. But towards the end of the book there's a seemingly endless string of chapters about military policies in various countries which I found pretty tedious (partly because the power balance in the world has changed so much in the last 20 years that very little of the discussion was still relevant). But that's just my bias - someone else reading the book might find those chapters fascinating and the science stuff boring.
New Zealand gets quite a few mentions - for our nuclear-free policy, and for daring to stand up to the might of America (there's a lovely description in a footnote of the time we were struck off America's list of friendly countries, so that Ronald Reagan refused to acknowledge our ambassador, and Caspar Weinberger even pretended he'd never heard of us - it brought back just how proud I felt of my country at that time that we weren't bowed by America's ire. Forget Anzac Cove, that truely was New Zealand's finest hour.)
With gwilk's permission, this book will stay permanently in my Sagan collection.
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