Description: A vivid tour of US military efforts to understand, survive, and command harsh environments worldwide--and beyond.
Deserts, the Arctic, outer space--these extreme environments are often seen as inhospitable places at the edges of our maps. But from the 1940s through the 1960s, spurred by the diverse and unfamiliar regions the US military had navigated during World War II, the United States defense establishment took a keen interest in these places, dispatching troops to the Aleutian Islands, North Africa, the South Pacific, and beyond. To preserve the country's status as a superpower after the war, to pave runways and build bridges, engineers had to understand and then conquer dunes, permafrost, and even the surface of the moon. Sand, Snow, and Stardust explores how the US military generated a new understanding of these environments and attempted to master them, intending to cement America's planetary power. Operating in these regions depended as much on scientific and cultural knowledge as on military expertise and technology. From General George S. Patton learning the hard way that the desert is not always hot, to the challenges of constructing a scientific research base under the Arctic ice, to the sheer implausibility of modeling Martian environments on Earth, Gretchen Heefner takes us on a wry expedition into the extremes and introduces us to the people who have shaped our insight into these extraordinary environments. Even decades after the first manned space flight, plans for human space exploration and extraplanetary colonization are still based on what we know about stark habitats on Earth. An entertaining survey of the relationship between environmental history and military might, Sand, Snow, and Stardust also serves as a warning about the further transformation of the planet--whether through desertification, melting ice caps, or attempts to escape it entirely.Brief description: Gretchen Heefner is professor of history at Northeastern University. She is the author of The Missile Next Door: The Minuteman in the American Heartland.
Review Quotes: "After leading us through World War II, where the Allies learned most of their lessons on the fly, Ms. Heefner takes us through the next four decades, from building air bases in Libya and Greenland to thinking about colonies on the moon and Mars. . . . The author documents our fascination with space from before we even had the technology to get there, including early science-fiction films, novels and artwork . . ." -- "Wall Street Journal"