The Politics of Space: A History of U.S.-Soviet/Russian Competition and Cooperation
by Matthew J. Von Bencke
Westview Press, 1997
hardcover, 264pp.
ISBN 0-8133-3192-7
US$49.95

The history of human exploration of space has largely been the history of competition, and occasionally cooperation, between the United States and the Soviet Union, now Russia. The two countries used space as another arena of competition during the Cold War, and their space efforts waxed and waned in conjunction with Cold War tensions. Matthew J. Von Bencke provides a summary, but little enlightening new information, on space competition and cooperation in his book The Politics of Space.
     Von Bencke's short (the main text, including footnotes, is less than 200 pages) work summarizes the competition and efforts at cooperation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union starting with Sputnik. This book doesn't try to provide new insights into the nature of either nation's space efforts, but instead provides a brief, at times all too brief, history of space efforts. Von Bencke works to show that the space efforts of both countries were tied to the Cold War tensions between the two, with the amount of cooperation and competition between the nations highly dependent on the state of world affairs.
     Von Bencke goes perhaps a little too far linking space competition and cooperation to the Cold War; his "Chronology of the Space Age" in the appendix reads more like a chronology of the Cold War, with numerous entries that have no relation to either nation's space programs. There are also a few errors in the book, including at one point skipping over the entire Skylab program when discussing American space efforts in the 1970s! Also, for a book copyrighted in 1997, it is rather dated, with no new entries in the text or chronology after mid-1995. This is an important loss, since the new cooperation between the U.S. and Russia on Mir and the International Space Station, and some of the troubles that have ensued, receive virtually no mention. Given the high cost of this book, it's tough to recommend this to anyone but those interested in a summary of the rivalry in space between the two superpowers.

Island in the Sky: Building the International Space Station
by Piers Bizony
Aurum Press Ltd., 1996
softcover, 142 pp., illus.
ISBN 1-85410-436-5
US$27.95

Space stations have been at the forefront of space news recently, for mostly the wrong reasons: equipment problems continue to hound the crew of the Russian space station Mir, and funding problems have delayed the assembly of the ambitious new International Space Station by as much as 11 months. Still, there is considerable interest in these orbiting facilities, which serve, figuratively at least, as a beachhead in our exploration of space. Piers Bizony explores the technical and political issues behind the International Space Station in his book Island in the Sky.
     Bizony starts with a history of space station concepts and accomplishments, from the earliest designs on the drawing boards through Skylab, the Salyuts, and Mir. He then looks at the development of the International Space Station starting with American plans for Space Station Freedom, the innumerable redesigns, and eventual partnership with Russia. The book goes into 1996, too early to explore some of the recent difficulties with the space station. Later chapters explore some of the research that could be accomplished on the station and how station crews would live and work on the completed facility.
     The book has the outward appearance of another coffee-table book, with a small number of large, lavishly-illustrated pages. However, a lot of good information is packed into this book's pages. Bizony does not try to create a piece of pro-station propaganda; thereีs some sharp commentary on the ups and downs of Freedom and the International Space Station. One drawback to this book is the lack of an index, which makes it hard to look up particular items in the book. Otherwise, though, Island in the Sky a well-written introduction to the technical and political history of the International Space Station.

Volcanoes of the Solar System
by Charles Frankel
Cambridge University Press, 1996
hardcover, 232 pp., illus.
ISBN 0-521-47201-6
US$69.95

The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins
by Alan Guth
Addison Wesley Longman, 1997
hardcover, 368 pages, illus.
ISBN 0-201-14942-7
US$25

The Big Bang theory had, by the late 1970s, done a good job explaining what happened to the universe after the creation event. What it had problems with, though, were the circumstances associated with the creation event itself, and how it created a universe with the size, amount of matter, and characteristics astronomers observe today. It took the work of one nomadic postdoc, Alan Guth, to propose a theory of an "inflationary universe", where the universe expanded suddenly and dramatically in the first instants after the Big Bang, to resolve these problems. Guth descibes his work with inflationary theory and its impact on cosmology in the book The Inflationary Universe.
     Guth mixes personal anecdotes with a dicussion of the physics of inflation, from our understanding of the Big Bang before inflation theory to current flavors of inflation, and observations made by the COBE spacecraft which supported the inflation theories. Despite Guth's efforts to make the physics in the book (which includes discussion of some rather esoteric aspects of quantum mechanics and particle physics) understandable, the descriptions can get confusing, especially for those who don't follow the discussion in the book closely. This is pretty much an unavoidable situation for a book on such a topic, though, and otherwise Alan Guth's work provides an insider's insight into one of the key areas of cosmological research at a level a non-scientist can grasp.