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- Verified Buyer
I am a professional historian. This means that for a large part of my career, I was paid a more-than-livable salary to teach college history, and to write a bit of it, too. I also worked in technology-transfer for fifteen years at a federal lab. I offer these details only so that you can put my review in context for your own analysis.This book succeeds on a number of levels. At the same time, it contains what my major professor (and mentor) termed “factual blunders.” A few of those lie in the realm of graduate-history-seminar-level quibbles, and I will leave them unstated. Others bear mention, and two examples will suffice.THE BADWhen the author says that federal inventions cannot be patented, he is flat wrong. I wrote two patent-license deals for the government and filed a number of patent applications (which were awarded), all for the benefit of federal inventors. Ironically, this error doesn't detract from the author's thesis. In fact, had he stated the actual case accurately, his argument would have been rather stronger.Another is his statement that the size of the federal government in terms of employees has remained roughly static since 1966. In one sense, this is true. In quite another, it is patently false. In my office, I had more contractors working for me than federal persons (that is, either civil-service or military persons). When the Clinton administration reduced the number of civil-service employees in the Department of Defense by a large amount beginning in 1993, the mission didn't go away, just the “feds” to do it--and managers immediately began hiring contractors to take up the slack.(This state of affairs yields some odd conundrums, particularly in the realm of who can legally do what, but I digress.)Since its inception, the Department of Energy (the Carter years, i.e. post-1966) has been roughly 90% contractors. Much of the Department of Defense has become so, though not to that degree. And as Friedman quite rightly points out, because of stove-piping, I cannot say much about other federal departments or agencies, but I can say that they have gone the contractor route to some degree also. (The State Department casualties in Benghazi included ... contractors...)All this serves to make the point that Friedman's argument would have been stronger in terms of government “size and reach” had he included non-federal employees who have the same authority as federal employees in most cases. Moreover, his statistic says nothing about the effects of computerization. For example, fifty years ago, many civil servants were in the habit of typing and copying memos and other documents, answering phones, etc. Now, where I used to work, department secretaries have been replaced by divisional secretaries (one shared by four departments). The “slots” have gone to other technocrats, thereby strengthening the model. And department heads (to say nothing of those below them) type and send their own e-mails and documents.THE GOODHis discussion of cycles and the American character is quite cogent. Were I to go into detail, I would provide spoilers, in effect, and I shall not do that. No matter what else you read in this review, this book is recommended, with a “yes, but” here and there. The things that make one's head nod are numerous.THE UGLYThe author says he will not engage on “climate change,” and then he goes on to do exactly that. He is right when he says the models should not be commented on for reasons too many to go into here. To keep it simple: having managed numerous scientists and engineers (and their inventions), I can conjure more persons to make arguments for and against either side of the “climate change” question than you can shake a stick at (as my mother would have said).No less than the Air Force Chief Scientist wrote a scathing article some years ago on the fallacy of space-based solar power, particularly debunking the environmental “benefits.” (Launching rockets is environmentally ugly.) But the author doubles down on his prediction from his previous book that this will and should be done without any evidence of success in more-recent efforts.For my own view, if the weather-guessers can't get the weather-guess right when they are discussing your weather two weeks out, how can they get it right for the entire world one hundred *years* out?I know... Writing that sentence is like raising a golf club high atop a huge mountain in a thunderstorm...READ THIS BOOKIt will orient you, and put things in a solid perspective. I will not criticize the book for things it didn't undertake, as too many “critics” are wont to do. But keep in mind a number of cycles that are part of American history that could work into the future, in sync with Friedman's predictions. For example, America has experienced a number of revivals (or “awakenings”), stretching back to before the Revolution. Two of them correspond to the 1960s and the Great Depression (two big events in the author's thesis).Read what Friedman has to say, and you will be well served. But after that, please do think for yourself. Americans are forever in search of The Silver Bullet (or, if you prefer, The Answer for All Things). This book is A silver bullet (or, if you prefer, AN answer to SOME things).
