Plasma Physics and Engineering Book

This is a tough book to apply a rating to, and that's for a variety of reasons: The instigating factors of its creation have shifted in perception over the last ~80 years. Each individual contribution tackles the subject from a singular angle - some are more focused on ethics, others on the bureaucracy of international arms control, others on the raw science, and all areas in-between. At times, the language evokes the moral limitations of the age, from the use of the term "Oriental" (as an Asian-American, I take this as par for the course) to a distinctly post-war sense of American exceptionalism. This latter one is particularly notable in many of the essays which attempt to pose solutions for the nuclear crisis.

But anyways. For those reasons and others I find it necessary to specify why it is that I came to this book: I've been obsessed with the dawning of the Atomic Age and the transhumanist ethical/moral implications it opened up, and I wanted to hear from the scientists themselves. Someone who might be looking for more of a biographical vignette of a particular scientist, or a primary source document about the various sentiments of the relevant scientists might rate this book from a completely different place.

Even through my particular lens, however, it's striking to me just how rewarding the majority of the essays in this collection really are. The full weight of the moment - whether from a purely ethical perspective or a purely scientific one - is successfully imbued through almost all of the pieces, though not in the ways I had expected going in. Einstein's contribution serves as something of a finale despite being fairly dry, and I found myself a bit let down by Oppenheimer's essay, though he certainly more than made up for it with his later statements and advocacy. These were far more focused on the ethical implications on a humanist level.

On the contrary, some of the more academic pieces such as those by Harlow Shapley and Eugene Wigner actually turned out to be quite striking - and I say this as someone who has barely engaged with chemistry since high school. Whether it's the result of stellar (I noticed this pun after typing, so no pun intended, but I am sorry) editing or a deep understanding of the moral implications of the moment - after all, these were written less than a year after Hiroshima and Nagasaki - the prose throughout is excellent and never lets the reader forget the scale of the crisis at hand.

The reason I came to this book is because, as a young person, I feel that the climate crisis serves as an analogous frontier for the human project on Earth. It is like a nuclear war that is unfolding everywhere, each second; the explosive chain reaction has already begun, but we still have time to save ourselves. To do so, however, requires a depth of thinking and perspective for which the only corollary seems to be the entry into the Atomic Age. Never before and never since have we encountered two issues that so plainly eliminate the divisions human beings instinctively draw between each other.

I came to this book for a snapshot of the moment right after humanity opened the door into this utterly terrifying - and thus utterly hopeful - realm of thinking. What does responsibility look like when faced with such potential catastrophe? This book delivered. Any flaws or particularities pale in comparison to the living words of those most knowledgeable and most responsible for pushing us over that ethical threshold. For the first time we were attempting to advocate for the future of all of humanity, spurred there by our own progress. In my opinion, there are still many essential lessons to be learned from this collection, regardless of why you're coming to it.