The dreadful global conflagration known as the Second World War was more than the clashing of great armies on bloody battlefields. A different kind of war was being waged in the secret laboratories on both sides of the conflict -- a war that would alter the course and determine the outcome of the bitter hostilities, forever changing our world and future.
In a stunning amalgam of science and history, Tom Shachtman, the critically acclaimed author of Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold and The Phony War, 1939-1940, gives us a riveting chronicle of World War II's forgotten combatants: the engineers, physicists, chemists, and academics whose contributions to the war effort were as important as the noble sacrifices of the soldiers, sailors, and airmen who bravely risked their lives.
While it is a widely accepted fact that America's development and employment of the atomic bomb ended the Pacific struggle -- and that the failure of Hitler's scientists to develop their own A-bomb helped to doom Germany -- little note has been made of the other remarkable scientific accomplishments of this dark and terrible epoch. Beginning with a fascinating overview of the Depression-era struggle to establish scientific and military alliances that would ultimately enable the Allies to catch up to the Axis's early dominance, Terrors and Marvels offers an eye-opening history of the furious battles for technological superiority covertly waged by the world's most brilliant minds.
From the creation of faster, deadlier jets and rockets to the development of biological, chemical, and electronic warfare -- from astonishing advances in medical science to breakthroughs in radar and decoding -- the incredible successes and failures that occurred in top-secret facilities around the world in the early 1940s never made headlines but often determined triumph and defeat. Here, also, are the intensely human stories of the architects of the terrifying war machines -- men and women of rare intelligence and integrity torn by the conflicting demands of conscience and country, haunted by their roles in the use and abuse of powerful science.
Edifying, enthralling, startling, and sobering, Terrors and Marvels is a masterful work that sheds light on the astonishing achievements of a remarkable few and the great and terrible technology that swung the pendulum of victory in the Allies' direction.

Terrors and Marvels: How Science and Technology Changed the Character and Outcome of World War II

History

Tom Shachtman

Military

William Morrow

An epic courtroom battle against big oil over the restoration of a gulf coast marsh. Bill Dores larger crusade was to preserve the Louisiana coast's culture and way pf life, to uphold the integrity of its people, and to demonstrate that in a state sullied by corruption scandals there were men and women unalterably committed to doing the right thing.

To Do the Right Thing

Cameron Meadows Preservation Trust

Chronicles the social, political, and economic events that marked the 1963-74 decade and analyzes the lasting effects of that series of shocks on the American national consciousness

DECADE OF SHOCKS: Dallas to Watergate 1963-1974

Americas

Simon&Schuster

Whoever Fights Monsters: Brilliant FBI Detective's Career-long War Against Serial Killers

Politics & Social Sciences

Robert K. Ressler

Social Sciences

Rumspringa is Tom Shachtman's celebrated look at a littleknown Amish coming-of-age ritual, the rumspringa--the period of "running around" that begins for their youth at age sixteen. During this time, Amish youth are allowed to live outside the bounds of their faith, experimenting with alcohol, premarital sex, revealing clothes, telephones, drugs, and wild parties. By allowing such broad freedoms, their parents hope they will learn enough to help them make the most important decision of their lives--whether to be baptized as Christians, join the church, and forever give up worldly ways, or to remain in the world. In this searching book, Shachtman draws on his skills as a documentarian to capture young people on the cusp of a fateful decision, and to give us "one of the most absorbing books ever written about the Plain People" (Publishers Weekly).

RUMSPRINGA to be or not to be Amish

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

Gentlemen scientists and revolutionaries : the founding fathers in the age of enlightenment

Science & Math

History & Philosophy

New York City : Palgrave Macmillan

Whoever Fights Monsters: FBI Psychological Profiler - Shocking Memoir of Murder Close to the Face of Those Who Abnormalities [Japanese Edition]

Biographies & Memoirs

True Crime

Hayakawa

New. 1994. Same day shipping from US. Whoever Fights Monsters. Japanese Edition

Whoever Fights Monsters: FBI Psychological Profiler - Shocking Memoir of Murder Close to the Face of Those Who Abnormalities [In Japanese Language]

Hayakawa Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Tom Shachtman. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Tom Shachtman