A great popularizer of all things scientific, Freeman Dyson (The Scientist as Rebel) collects 21 pieces--previously published in the New York Review of Books--into Dreams of Earth and Sky. The essays exhibit Dyson's ability to distill difficult subjects into a parlance most readers will understand, as well as cheerful admissions that he may be wrong. But he prefers being "politically incorrect and provocative," as illustrated by his belief that modern calculations of global warming are incorrect.
Fans of the TV show Manhattan will find his piece about Robert Oppenheimer of particular interest. Oppenheimer was "astonishingly effective as leader of the Los Alamos project" and "never regretted his role as the chief architect of the [hydrogen] bomb," Dyson writes. While Oppenheimer preferred the Army's tactical weapons rather than the Air Force's desire for the H-bomb, he went along with the Air Force because he "understood that the project was not scientific but military." Dyson thinks Winston Churchill "was in love with war and weapons, ever since he was a small boy." He describes Einstein and Hawking as "two scientific superstars," with Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Richard Dawkins as "lesser lights"; Richard Feynman is "rising to the status of superstar," thanks largely to his significant contributions as a member of the Challenger commission.
In "Our Biotech Future" Dyson predicts that the "domestication of biotechnology will dominate our lives during the next 50 years at least as much as the domestication of computers has dominated our lives during the previous 50." This is what makes Dyson so interesting to read: he's witty and sage--and opinionated. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher