From Pugwash to Putin : a critical history of US-Soviet scientific cooperation /

Drawing on long experience managing formal exchanges, Sher (formerly, National Science Foundation) provides a political and personal history of scientific exchanges between the US and the former Soviet Union. Preparation of the book was supported by a MacArthur Foundation grant, under whose terms Sher traveled to Ukraine and Georgia to interview former participants. Exchanges began as a result of the Pugwash Conference in 1957 (the same year as the Soviet Sputnik launch). The exchanges reached a peak after the Nixon-Brezhnev "Détente" in 1972 and declined during the 1980s (during a time when President Reagan referred to the USSR as an "evil empire"). After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, international exchanges found a critical source of support through George Soros's International Science Foundation (ISF). Exchanges dwindled with the rise to power of Vladimir Putin and were discontinued in 2009. Sher acknowledges that the book is about scientific relations--as documented through his interviews with 62 former participants, in the US and abroad--and not about Soviet science itself. The latter subject is covered in works by Loren R. Graham, whom Sher acknowledges as an early inspiration for his own career. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals. General readers. --Frank T. Manheim, George Mason University