"It was purely an internal matter. Every kid past sixteen knew this fork, what the good guys did here, and the bad guys. Good guys stayed true to their love of science, their pursuit of knowledge for the good of humanity. Bad guys were venal. They made choices based on money."
Ginger Strand
The Brothers Vonnegut
If this is your first time to this blog, I really, really love the works of Kurt Vonnegut. I think his books are brilliant, honest, funny, and heart breaking. He does a fantastic job contrasting what we do as a society and a species against what we know we shouldn't. Most people know him for his book, Slaughterhouse-five, his book explaining the firebombing of Dresden. Vonnegut's personal life greatly influenced his work. But I had absolutely no idea how much.
In The Brothers Vonnegut, Ginger Strand follows the lives of Kurt and Bernard Vonnegut just after the end of World War II. Bernie was a scientist working on atmospheric studies, and Kurt was a (secretly) aspiring writer. Both of them ended up working at GE, in New York, a place that was every scientists dream for the short peace that existed momentarily between WWII and the Cold War, where money was abundant and scientists were encouraged to follow their curiosities and to discover knew things about the universe. Kurt and Bernie saw as these discoveries and the prevailing attitude towards science shifted from one of creation to one who's purpose was for war. These tensions greatly shaped the brothers lives as they struggled with the same deep questions. They led Bernie to make great discoveries that still affect us today (Project Cirrus eventually let to an examination on how man effects climate), and the questions that Kurt pondered in his books are ones we must answer today.
This book was fantastic. Strands storytelling is brilliant. It pulled me through the book quickly, and she moves between the two brothers flawlessly, brilliantly mixing their two stories to find the big questions surrounding science and morality that plagued both of them. She did a wonderful job relating both the technical scientific ideas and the complex moral ones, all while brilliantly relating the history of Project Cirrus, which changed the way we think about weather and climate.
I highly recommend
this book.
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