Two new books raise moral questions

Before a new round of Sunday reviews  comes out tomorrow, a few notable critiques from last week, both with a moral edge:

In the New York Times, David Holloway reviews Wayne Biddle’s Dark Side of the Moon: Wernher von Braun, the Third Reich, and the Space Race, a “deeply skeptical account” of the rocket scientist’s early career, here.

“Biddle argues that German rocketry was a form of technological Romanticism with strong cultural connections to right-wing politics.  The United States, like the Soviet Union, built on what Germany had done. Did it inherit more than the technology?”

Biddle has a overarching point that transcends its subject: “scientists and engineers, by claiming to be ‘apolitical,’ often escape being held to account for what they help to produce.  In other words, von Braun is an egregious example of a more general phenomenon.” It rather brings to mind the Book Haven’s recent post on Tintin and its creator, the Belgian artist Hergé.

Meanwhile, over at the Washington Post, Jack Rakove reviews John Yoo’s  “deeply unsettling account” of the role of the presidency in our constitutional scheme, Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George W. Bush, here.
“Given Yoo’s strong conservatism, it would be easy for liberals to dismiss Crisis and Command as one more venture in a hackneyed debate. That would be a big mistake.” Rakove calls the book “always provocative and thoughtful,” noting “though I disagree in key respects with his positions, his arguments merit attention and respect.”

Rakove concludes, “The presidents we admire possessed a pronounced confidence in their authority. … However much we celebrate the heroic presidents, Americans, as a people, have a stake in seeing the whole government achieve its potential.”

Author: Cynthia Haven

Cynthia Haven has written for The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, World Literature Today, and other publications. Her work has also appeared in Le Monde, La Repubblica, The Kenyon Review, Quarterly Conversation, The Georgia Review, Civilization, and others. She has been a Milena Jesenská Journalism Fellow with the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna. Peter Dale in Conversation with Cynthia Haven was published in London, 2005. Her Czestaw Mitosz: Conversations was published in 2006; Joseph Brodsky: Conversations in 2003; An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czestaw Mitosz was published in 2011 with Ohio University Press / Swallow Press. She is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford. Her biography René Girard, A Life will be published next year. Join me at twitter: @chaven View all posts by Cynthia Haven