scholarly journals The Journalist as Historian: Nicholas Lemann's: The Big Test

2001 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-72
Author(s):  
Robert L. Hampel
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Standardized Testing ◽  
High Status ◽  
Yale University ◽  
World War ◽  
Long Duration ◽  
History Of ◽  
Educational Testing Service ◽  
Personnel Department

Few books have the scope and sweep of Nicholas Lemann's The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999). In 400 pages the author takes up five large topics. The first third is a history of the rise of standardized testing, especially the origins of the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the largest and best known nonprofit testing corporation in this country. The second part traces the post-World War II expansion of higher education, with detailed case studies of the California system and Yale University. The final third features a series of snapshots and essays on affirmative action. Running throughout the entire book are the interrelated topics of college admissions and economic mobility—(the universities supposedly became a “national personnel department” p. 345, which “grant the high scorers a general, long-duration ticket to high status that can be cashed in anywhere p. 347.”)

An uncertain life

1994 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-151
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Uncertainty Principle ◽  
Atomic Energy ◽  
Werner Heisenberg ◽  
World War ◽  
Fundamental Physics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Farm Hall

David C. Cassidy, Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg . W.H. Freeman and Co., New York, 1991. $29.95, pp. xii + 669. ISBN 071672 2437 There is wit and double meaning in the title of this book. In the future, say 200 years hence, anyone who can name ten scientists of the 20th century will rather surely include the name of Heisenberg in the list, and couple it with the Uncertainty Principle, even if by then it is only taken to mark a stage in the history of the development of fundamental physics. And, for the present, any journalist writing about Heisenberg is likely to be dealing with uncertainty regarding the facts of German work on atomic energy during World War II (very probably under a headline referring to ‘Heisenberg’s bomb’), and regarding Heisenberg’s attitude to politics, and to the ethics of doing such work under the nazis. Cassidy’s book was written before the publication of the story of the secretlyrecorded conversations in 1945 of Heisenberg and other German scientists, in Operation Epsilon: the Farm Hall Transcripts (Institute of Physics Publishing, Bristol and Philadelphia, 1993), now back-translated into German* with an informative interview with C.F. von Weizsäcker. * Dieter Hoffmann, Operation Epsilon: Die Farm Hall Protokolle oder Die Angst der Allierten vor der deutschen Atombombe . Rowohlt, Berlin, September 1993.

The Return of Memory: New Discussions about German Suffering in World War II

2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 74-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Langenbacher
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Natural History ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of

Jörg Friedrich, Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkreig 1940-1945 (Munich: Propyläen Verlag, 2002)Günther Grass, Crabwalk (Orlando: Harcourt, 2002)W. G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction (New York: Random House, 2003)

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