Books in Brief

A Journey to Matecumbe, by Robert Lewis Taylor (McGraw-Hill, $5.95). Huck Finn is such a mastermold of a story that there is no reason why Mark Twain’s version, however grand, should be the only one to delight us—especially when someone who knows as much marrow-bone American lore as Robert Lewis Taylor decides to follow the same Mississippi trail. In this high-spirited reprise, Huck is called Davey, and though his dialect is tamer than the original, he tells as tall and gamey a tale as ever. It’s all about how a clutch of post-Civil War mavericks escaped the Ku Klux Klan by taking to the River, and then just kept on sailing until, after 400 pages of pre-Faulknerian sound and fury, they lived happily ever after on a pineapple plantation in Florida. It may be only a divertimento, but it’s a dilly. No astronaut should be put into orbit without it. P. melik

Science and Government, by C. P. Snow (Harvard, $2.50). When a scientist who is also a novelist turns his hand to history, truth is in double jeopardy. Sir Charles Percy Snow has a point to make, and he rests his Godkin lectures on an overdramatized account of the quarrel between two British scientists: F. A. Lindemann (Lord Cherwell), scientific adviser to Winston Churchill for thirty years; and Sir Henry Tizard, chairman of Britain’s Aeronautical Research Committee from 1933 to 1943. Was Churchill’s intimate a foul fiend? Was Tizard the most brilliant scientist ever to work on British military problems? Had Churchill gained office in the mid-1930s, would Lindemann have stifled radar and so lost the war? Sir Charles implies these things—rather a steep drift of Snow for so late in the spring. But his point remains: it’s a tough problem for governments to get good scientific advice “so long as we have nation-states.” He draws some lessons from his fable: avoid the “solitary scientific overlord”; avoid gadgeteers; avoid secrecy (an unnecessary injunction from the land of Klaus Fuchs); create a “model” of the future; lace the government bureaus with scientists. But Sir Charles ignores the final question: Who will choose the scientists? “Science” is one word but not one entity. Scientists quarrel among themselves; they have their private allegiances. Sir Charles should tell us if there is a difference between Linus Pauling and Arthur Compton in their ability to serve their country. He should tell us the criteria by which a non-scientific executive may choose its scientific advisers. He should tell us whether the government has as much right to choose its experts as Harvard does to choose its lecturers.

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A Journey to Matecumbe, by Robert Lewis Taylor (McGraw-Hill, $5.95). Huck Finn is such a mastermold of a story that there is no reason why Mark Twain’s version, however grand, should be the only one to delight us—especially when someone who knows as much marrow-bone American lore as Robert Lewis Taylor decides to follow the same Mississippi trail. In this high-spirited reprise, Huck is called Davey, and though his dialect is tamer than the original, he tells as tall and gamey a tale as ever. It’s all about how a clutch of post-Civil War mavericks escaped the Ku Klux Klan by taking to the River, and then just kept on sailing until, after 400 pages of pre-Faulknerian sound and fury, they lived happily ever after on a pineapple plantation in Florida. It may be only a divertimento, but it’s a dilly. No astronaut should be put into orbit without it. P. melik

Science and Government, by C. P. Snow (Harvard, $2.50). When a scientist who is also a novelist turns his hand to history, truth is in double jeopardy. Sir Charles Percy Snow has a point to make, and he rests his Godkin lectures on an overdramatized account of the quarrel between two British scientists: F. A. Lindemann (Lord Cherwell), scientific adviser to Winston Churchill for thirty years; and Sir Henry Tizard, chairman of Britain’s Aeronautical Research Committee from 1933 to 1943. Was Churchill’s intimate a foul fiend? Was Tizard the most brilliant scientist ever to work on British military problems? Had Churchill gained office in the mid-1930s, would Lindemann have stifled radar and so lost the war? Sir Charles implies these things—rather a steep drift of Snow for so late in the spring. But his point remains: it’s a tough problem for governments to get good scientific advice “so long as we have nation-states.” He draws some lessons from his fable: avoid the “solitary scientific overlord”; avoid gadgeteers; avoid secrecy (an unnecessary injunction from the land of Klaus Fuchs); create a “model” of the future; lace the government bureaus with scientists. But Sir Charles ignores the final question: Who will choose the scientists? “Science” is one word but not one entity. Scientists quarrel among themselves; they have their private allegiances. Sir Charles should tell us if there is a difference between Linus Pauling and Arthur Compton in their ability to serve their country. He should tell us the criteria by which a non-scientific executive may choose its scientific advisers. He should tell us whether the government has as much right to choose its experts as Harvard does to choose its lecturers.