Tag Archives: George W. Bush
Wednesday’s Book Review: “US Presidents and the Militarization of Space, 1946—1967″
US Presidents and the Militarization of Space, 1946—1967. By Sean Kalic. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2012. I was quite pleased when Sean Kalic’s book, US Presidents and the Militarization of Space, 1946—1967, appeared in the Centennial of Flight … Continue reading
Wednesday’s Book Review: “Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush”
Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush. By John W. Dean. New York: Warner Books, 2004. John Dean’s work is a stinging rebuke of the state of the Republican Party and how far it has slid from … Continue reading
NASA’s Space Shuttle and the Department of Defense
During the 1970s, the Space Shuttle became the “sine qua non” of NASA, intended as it was to make spaceflight routine, safe, and relatively inexpensive. Although NASA wanted the shuttle for its purposes, the Department of Defense (DOD) agreed to … Continue reading
Is There a Military Human Spaceflight Mission on the Horizon?
There has been a long mating dance between the civil and military space programs over the past few the years relative to the role of humans in space. In a succession of recent studies ranging from the Air Force Science … Continue reading
Wednesday’s Book Review: “The Twentieth Century: A People’s History”
The Twentieth Century: A People’s History. By Howard Zinn. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. No historian of the United States has been more provocative than Howard Zinn (1922–2010), whose leftist philosophy permeated his writings and never failed to challenge his readers. … Continue reading
Notes on an Important Book: Glenn Greenwald’s “A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency”
A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency. By Glenn Greenwald. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007. Salon reporter and constitutional law attorney Glenn Greenwald’s thesis is straightforward: George W. Bush approached every issue he faced … Continue reading
Notes on an Important Book: Ross Gelbspan’s “Boiling Point”
Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists, and Activists Have Fueled the Climate Crisis—and What We Can Do to Avert Disaster. By Ross Gelbspan. New York: Basic Books, 2004. The author of this book, journalist Ross Gelbspan, sounds … Continue reading
Notes on An Important Book: “Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now”
Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now. By David Sirota. New York: Ballantine Books, 2011. In many respects Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now is … Continue reading
Mormon Nauvoo and the Question of Class and Power
This, of course, gets to the really interesting questions of power: who holds it, and more important why they hold it and how they use it. There should be no question, of course, that social, economic, educational, institutional, and other … Continue reading
A Return to the Moon by 2020?
Yesterday, a candidate for the Republican nomination as president, Newt Gingrich, gave a speech on space policy in Florida. “By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon, and it will be … Continue reading
