Thaddel

It is impossible to leave this book without a strange feeling of awe that, as Schlosser writes in his concusion, “none of the roughly seventy thousand [!] nuclear weapons built by the United States since 1945 has ever detonated inadvertently or without proper authorization.” Over the roughly 480 pages of raw text, there are too many accidents, including many explosions and fires, to recount. Still, if by intricate safety design or sheer luck, an actual detonation has so far always been avoided. So is it reassuring to know that things have always turned out benign as yet, or is it actually frightening to know just how close we came so many times?

The grander narrative of how US nuclear armament and policy developed from 1945 to the end of the Cold War is interspersed with a granular depiction of the 1980 explosion of a Titan II rocket carrying a W53 warhead, the most destructive ever used by the US. While these chapters provide a welcome break from the birds-eye view of the grand narrative, they can be somewhat frustrating too. At least I found it sometimes hard to remember exactly who did what and where whenever we were dropped back in Damascus after having spent the last couple dozen pages with, say, the Eisenhower Administration.

Speaking of which, I was left somewhat confused by this president in particular. There are various times in which Schlosser will recount Eisenhower's distaste for nuclear weapons and how false or overstated intelligence coupled with corporate pressures lead him to his famous warning of the Military-Industrial Complex. Yet it seemed like, in the end, he would always give in to demands of further armament and less civilian control. I realize that these chapters were an overview of each Administration, but still those parts in particular left me wanting more explanation of the rationale behind Eisenhower's decisions.

That said, as a starting point into the world of nuclear weapons and how to mitigate their threat, you can do a lot worse than this eminently readable book.

A decent read, even if I did occasionally roll my eyes at the author's prose. When it works, it can be really funny and clever. But sometimes less is more. I don't know if the quotes-that-involve-the-word-bear at the beginning of every single chapter were really needed, same as some of the more fanciful wordsmithing deployed in the text.

Reading about characters as colorful as Grafton's is always interesting, and they are thankfully supplemented with discussions of (sadly not really with) relevant state authorities and their contributions to Grafton's bear problem. I was a bit taken aback by the chapter in which the author discusses the parasite Toxoplasma gondii as a possible culprite not just of the increasingly invasive bears but even some of the human behavior in the story. It appears out of nowhere and is then dropped and makes barely any re-appearance. I feel like you'd either want to more fully explore that train of thought or leave it out. This way just felt awkward.

Jungingers Perspektive als Religionswissenschaftler bietet einen wichtigen und vielleicht untersch??tzten Blickwinkel auf den nationalsozialistischen Antisemitismus. Vor allem legt er dar, dass eine augenscheinlich scharfe Trennung zwischen althergebrachtem (religi??sem) Antijudaismus und modernem (pseudobiologischem) Antisemitismus einem n??herem Blick kaum standh??lt. Ein gro??er Teil seines Buches ist dem Umfeld der Universit??t T??bingen gewidmet, einerseits als gemachtem Nest f??r den NS* und andererseits als Lehrstation einer gro??en Zahl sp??terer intellektueller Wegbereiter/Legitimierer und aktiver Funktion??re der Shoah. Dieser Abschnitt besteht zu gro??en Teilen aus einer Aneinanderreihung von T??terbiografien, was eindrucksvoll und lehrreich, aber auch weniger “fl??ssig” lesbar ist. Er beschr??nkt sich auch gr????tenteils auf T??bingen, “Judenforschungs”-Institutionen in anderen St??dten werden zwar bei Relevanz genannt, aber bekommen eine weit weniger detaillierte Behandlung. Das Buch ist also eine deutlich regional-spezifischer angelegte Studie als der Titel suggeriert. Das macht sie aber nicht weniger lesenswert.


Die Gr??ndung 1477 wurde durch eine gleichzeitige Ausweisung aller j??dischen Bewohnerinnen der Stadt begleitet. Nach 1933 mussten nur 1,6% des T??binger Lehrk??rpers entlassen werden, eben weil man sich dort seit jeher erfolgreich gegen jede Teilhabe j??discher Gelehrter wehrte