View Single Post
  #3  
Old 13th May 2019, 20:12
edwest2 edwest2 is offline
Alter Hase
 
Join Date: Jan 2016
Posts: 7,528
edwest2 will become famous soon enoughedwest2 will become famous soon enough
Re: Taking Nazi Technology: Allied Exploitation of German Science after the Second World War

Apparently, some of those recently arrived in publishing have decided to reinvent and rebrand book titles. Marketing concerns lead to hyperbole and nonsense. A recent example:

Sonic Wind - The Story of John Paul Stapp and How a Renegade Doctor Became the Fastest Man on Earth by Craig Ryan. And some chapter titles in the book also see what the publisher liked to see as opposed to no-nonsense scholarship. There is also a certain amount of bias and the author's own point of view added to a text that should not include any such things. Plus a certain amount of unnecessary drama. I have read very well written books on technical subjects, and while I had no problem ignoring such add-ons in this book, I doubt the average reader did.

Mr. Stapp was an officer and a doctor. He was invited to work at the little-known Biophysics Branch, Special Projects Section, of the Aero Medical Laboratory at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. This in June, 1946. The complete activities going on at Wright Field remain a mystery. It is obvious that very important work occurred that went beyond testing captured aircraft. It turned out he was fluent in German and was given 1,200 pages of captured German documents. His first assignment involved ejection seats and investigating the problems associated with rapid acceleration and deceleration.

The book's title was inaccurate and amounted to a poor choice of words.
Reply With Quote