GOOD READING

"Would the Insects Inherit the Earth?" is a most enlightening and commendable collection of answers by 35 health-physics and civil-defense experts to some very "hot" questions (What if the Soviets targeted nuclear reactors? Could insects spread radioactive contamination? Can farm animals be protected from radiation?). Nuclear war would be horrible enough without Sagan's science fiction, and here you have the answers by genuine experts. The book was commissioned by the Fed. Emerg. Managm. Adm. (I ob-tained it as a member of the Health Physics Soc.), but should even-tually be available to the public through Pergamon Press for $9.95 (ISBN 0-08-035970-1).

B.L. Cohen, "The nuclear accident at Chernobyl," Amer. J. Phys., Dec. 87, pp. 1076-83. Vintage Cohen! Do not overlook.

Starpower: The US and the international quest for fusion energy (OTA, Oct 1987) is an excellent overview, but only of magnetic confinement, not inertial methods. $10, Govt. Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402 (stock no. 052-003-01079-8).

J.H.Fremlin's outstanding Power Production. what are the risks? is at long last available in the US: $17.45 ppd., Oxford Univ. Press, 200 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016.

In 1979, when few questioned the MAD strategy and there was no SDI, I read an article by an anonymous author, "The danger is defeat, not destruction." I found it so brilliant and eye-opening that I reprinted it and sent out a copy with each AtE issue of Sept. 1979. I have now found out the author's identity: Dr Angelo M. Code-villa, then on the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, now a scholar at the Hoover Institution. In [Oct 87] I recommended his article on the anti-SDI physicists; and I now highly recommend his brilliant reply demolishing his critics in the Jan. 1988 Commentary. He is convincingly, though unwittingly, supported by Amer. Phys. Soc. President Fitch, who covers up his lack of arguments by heavy doses of name-dropping.

The same issue of Commentary has a fundamental article by P. Collier and D. Horowitz, "McCarthyism: the last refuge of the Left," which should be given the widest circulation. [I reprinted Horowitz's previous article several times and am now virtually out of copies, and greatly regret that I lack the time to reprint this one.]

"Nuclear Power's Secret," by myself, Wall St. J., 12/29/87.

Copies available for a SASE from AtE through March.

Myths about Transportation Deregulation (also Federal Spen-ding in Crisis), Citizens for a Sound Economy, 122 C St. NW/#700, Washington, DC 20001. (Contributions welcome.)

Cancer: What to fear, what not to fear, $1, NCEB, Box 7732, Louisville, KY 40207.

For those who read French, L'affaire Tchernobyl: la guerre des rumeurs by Y. Lecerf and E. Parker (Presses Universitaires, Paris 1987) is valuable, above all, for its collection of fantastic rumors spread by the media after Chernobyl, together with the pertinent truth. The authors offer several explanations, such as the public's love for the ancient children's game of fais-moi peur ("Scare me!") and, with Lidsky-like paranoia, the mentality induced by the super-powers' efforts to keep nuclear energy out of "lesser" countries' hands. It is, however, reassuring that cretinous "progressives" with academic titles are not a US monopoly. One Dr. Yves Daniel, in an opus entitled "Nuclear, we are all in danger of death!", writes "If men like Joliot-Curie, Oppenheimer or Sakharov had not existed, humanity would perhaps not be engaged in the present process of self-destruction. From time to time, the clocks ought to be put back to their time." The clocks ought to be put back. What a wonderful subtitle for The Progressive or The Nation!