Anne Hutchinson is one of those iconic figures whose place in living memory is bought at the price of dislocation from her own space in time. Hutchinson's spirited witness against Puritan power and orthodoxy, displayed in her famous trials before the Massachusetts General Court and the Boston Church, has encouraged modern scholars to portray her as, among other things, a prophet of civil, religious, and women's liberty; the specifics of these interpretations matter less than the interpreters' shared sense that Hutchinson was a woman who stood apart from her culture. By contrast, Michael Winship wants to tell the story of “[t]he historical Anne Hutchinson [who] fit fairly comfortably into that seemingly alien and claustrophobic world” of Puritanism (4).

For too many political scientists, “political history” means little more than poll results, aggregate vote totals, and DW-NOMINATE scores. Useful as these data may be for narrow purposes, they miss the complexity of political life. Real political history concerns the interplay of ideas, interests, institutions, and individuals.

Accessible and thought-provoking, DeGroot's history of nuclear weaponry from its theoretical origins through its Cold War escalations makes a diverse cast of characters seem familiar and a tale of earthshaking proportions unfold in a relatively sensible fashion. Written for interested nonexperts, the book does not engage scholarly debates directly. It covers the race to beat the Germans to the bomb through to the entrenchment of nuclear deterrence. Disarmament treaties and peace movements concern DeGroot only long enough to discount them. He adds color to the political and technological history of the bomb by supplementing it with considerations of its social repercussions and its representations in literature, film, music, and consumer items.

The single organizing fact of the Cold War was “the bomb.” In our present age of unipolarity, globalization, and the clash of civilizations, it is useful to remember that our current complexities exist only because the previous age of stark simplicity has passed into history. The decades from the end of World War II until the fall of Communism were years shaped by a nuclear standoff. The threat of nuclear conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union framed the politics and culture of the age. This framing was especially apparent in the 1950s and 1960s, before arms-control agreements lent an air of manageability to nuclear politics.

How the Cows Turned Mad describes the centuries-long search for the cause of obscure and always fatal diseases that first apparently afflicted sheep and later were found to attack people as well. This search led to the discovery of prions, the paradoxical proteins that scientists now believe are the cause of mad cow disease, Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (CJD), kuru, and scrapie. Along the way, researchers earned two Nobel Prizes. Author Maxime Schwartz is a molecular biologist, former head of the Institut Pasteur, and director of laboratories for the French agency for food safety, among his other scientific achievements. He is also an exceptionally clear writer.