Weapons and Hope

In "Weapons and Hope" Freeman Dyson combines the work of filling in the autobiography he started in "Disturbing the Universe" and the task of reflecting intelligently and critically on how, exactly, man may hope to survive as a species, having created nuclear weapons and having armed several nations with them.The autobiography part of "Weapons and Hope" takes a different tack from "Disturbing the Universe," being largely a chronicle of his father, the elder George Dyson, musician, cashiered teacher who redeemed himself and made a respectable living in the unlikeliest way imaginable for a musician pressed into World War I - by writing an instruction manual for the use of hand grenades, royalties from which removed his financial burdens for quite some time. Dyson's unflinching honesty in relating the shape of his father's early life is perhaps the best testimonial to that man; one can only hope to be the sort of man who could come through as well in such a recounting as Freeman Dyson's father.This sort of biographical detail is alternated with a very frank and erudite discussion of how nations actually use weapons to help achieve their national goals, as opposed to how we are taught this happens. As Dr.Dyson is one of that select group of physicists who seem to be consulted on the thornier technical aspects of national defense with regularity through many different administrations, his vantage on the subject matter is as good as one could hope for; his narration is at once clearer, more pleasant to read, and more piercingly accurate than anyone has a right to expect.Dyson also possesses the integrity to scrupulously separate what he knows to be true from what he believes to be true, something that other scientist-commentators on national defense such as the late Carl Sagan were not always as careful to do. One comes away from Dyson's cogently argued discussion of the several possible paths through the thicket of nuclear defense policy not so much reassured as armed with the information one needs to make the best of what is a grim situation indeed... and feeling as though one has sat with the man and discussed the matter with him at length and rather enjoyably.Freeman Dyson's gift for presenting even the most esoteric information accessibly and conversationally reminds one of C.S. Lewis' better essays, without the partisan glibness in which Lewis occasionally indulged. Having been a lifelong and devoted reader of Dyson's, when I Emailed him to ask about a point of technical history I was looking into several years ago, I had to be careful to remember that we had in fact never met - his writing is so readable and personable that one comes away feeling that one in fact had had the opportunity to discuss his subject with him in person.Whether you are curious about the actual state of national and global nuclear weapons policy (as opposed to what we have been told for years) and the ways in which we might survive the situation we are now in, or want

Physicist Freeman Dyson's first job was working as a staff scientist for a RAF strategic bombing wing during WWII. What he learned there, his experiences studying under Manhattan Project scientists at Cornell, and work on arms control treaties in the early 60s, informs this thoughtful, humble and painstaking examination of arms control and cold war diplomacy.While not as urgent a read as it might have been ten years ago, Weapons and Hope is still worth reading. We still live in a world with nuclear weapons, and Dyson's thoughts on anti-missile defenses are quite relevant.--Stefan Jones