Rescuing Prometheus: Four Monumental Projects That Changed the Modern World

Rating:
Summary: Boring telling of an interesting tale
Review: Hughes has picked out an interesting subject to write a book about--namely the rise of large scale technological projects in the post WWII world. Unfortuantely, I don't think he's enough of a writer to bring it off.

The best popular science/history hybrids bring you a sense of the excitement of the technological advance, a new knowledge of the problems faced and solutions found, and an insight into the characters and personalities behind the science. Hughes doesn't really do any of this. The book is extremely dry and reads like a laundry list of facts rather than a compelling narrative. None of the characters ever come alive. And for the most part, I didn't feel he did a very good job presenting the technological challenges faced. I think he perhaps tried to do too much with the book, telling four stories instead of one or two in the depth required to really draw the reader in.

I really wanted to like this book, especially as a former worker in operations research/systems analysis. But unfortunately, Hughes doesn't deliver on the promise that the subject has.

Rating:
Summary: Read this for the chapters on SAGE, Atlas, and ARPANET
Review: The chapters on SAGE, the Atlas missile program, and ARPANET were outstanding expositions of project management. What hit home for me was the depiction of the ultimate success of the visionary scientist/engineers associated with these programs, especially Licklider.

It's interesting to note there was quite a bit of fallout rather recently regarding problems with the Boston CA/T project; it seems there will be lessons to take away from that in the future and might make for a good reason for Hughes to revisit this work in a second edition.