A Celestial How To Do It

Andy Weir is an immensely talented writer. His first science fiction novel, The Martian, was an outstanding read (and a pretty good movie, too). Project Hail Mary, his latest, is fascinating and an even more engaging work. Tucked in between and published in 2017 is Artemis, an adventure caper set on the moon. The book highlights Weir’s strengths as well as some his weaknesses.

The story is told in the first person. Our narrator is “Jazz” – a twenty something who lives on Artemis, the only city on the moon. She is an ethical smuggler, a great friend with edges, and a troubled protagonist. A complicated back story founds out the picture. Solicited into a crime much more serious than smuggling, with all manner of complications, Jazz works to resolve her personal problems through ingenuity, courage and a healthy does of science. The city is saved along the way. She is a very smart, well-rounded heroine.

The science in Artemis is extraordinarily interesting. Physics, chemistry, and advanced technologies are examined in great detail. Weir’s world building is outstanding. The book even comes with schematics. If you follow along closely, it’s possible to imagine and see much of the action. It may be science fiction, but the book is far from fanciful.

While the story is strong, if a little convoluted, the characters other than Jazz are thinly sketched. Internal dialogue, complexity of thought and nuance simply are not part of Weir’s focus. They are types, and in some cases, stereotypes. The characters serve in function of the plot. Weir gives more attention to the airlock mechanisms than emotions. Artemis lacks the staying power of Weir’s stronger books. The technology and science are simply what interests him here, along with intersecting plot lines. It is fun to get caught up in remembering high school chemistry to guess next steps.

Artemis is entertaining, a good read for a summer holiday, but not for extended consideration.

David Potash

July 14, 2025 Reviews

Martial Mindset: Bush’s War Cabinet

James Mann is a journalist and author. An expert on American foreign policy, he does his research thoroughly and writes with clarity. One of Mann’s strengths is that he knows how to build a narrative with direction and surety. Read his works and one comes away with a real sense of learning something.

Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet is Mann’s best-known book. Published in 2004, it straddles the boundary between journalism and history. It was a best-seller for good reasons. Mann tells the history of the six key figures in President Bush’s war cabinet: Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Armitage, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz, and National Security Advisor Rice. Collectively, these well-known leaders helped to guide Bush and America into the invasion of Iraq. Understanding the team, their backgrounds and values, goes far in explicating the Republican foreign policy establishment. That goal – explication of them and how they thought – is the goal of Mann’s book. It is not an examination of how and why the US made the decision to invade.

The book spans more than three decades. We learn of the figures’ childhoods, education, and their rise to influence. As one might expect, amid the diversity of backgrounds there were multiple alignments and affiliations. One of Mann’s skills is teasing out those connections, something akin to backwards looking analysis. The book makes clear how the right background, ambition, and ability to skillfully play the Washington “game” of power could situate one in a position of privilege. Mann’s study likewise illustrates how the wrong choice, the wrong move, or simply bad luck could derail or delay a career. For each of the six, success was neither instantaneous nor assured. Each took different paths to secure a spot in history.

Mann sees the Bush group as representing both Cold War and post-Cold War thinking. He rightly stresses the prevalence of military thinking to the group. They had outsize faith in military solutions, regardless of the source of the issue. Accordingly, the group consistently advanced a military-first mindset, shaping policy and American priorities. Their influence spanned decades and remains a vital strand of thinking. The nickname “Vulcan” was self-assigned. The group believed that they were forging a military machine that would protect and advance US interests. Interestingly, that outsize belief may have been one of the reasons that they were chosen to be in Bush’s cabinet. Criticized for his lack of foreign policy bono fides, Bush intentionally sought out cabinet members that would burnish his reputation.

The traits that all shared, that seem to have pervaded the Bush establishment, included confidence, optimism that America was in the right (if only be default), and that American knowledge, values and problem-solving would eventual prevail in any situation. Mann is very effective in demonstrating how their confidence emerged, was rewarded and reinforced. We know more today about the missteps, the assumptions, and the outright errors of the Bush team. Mann, writing at the time, was able to forecast the strengths and weaknesses that could lead to all manner of consequences, good and bad.

Entertaining, illuminating and disheartening. Rise of the Vulcans remains a relevant book. One of Mann’s strengths is his ability to know how to explain while remaining disciplined. He does not pretend to explain broad historical movements. Nor is this a study of causality. Rather, the book humanizes political leadership and group think, something we would be well-served to always keep in mind.

David Potash

July 6, 2025 Reviews

Southern Industrialism, New Deal to Civil Rights

How the South organized and worked to become an industrial force is the focus of Katherine Rye Jewell’s Dollars for Dixie: Business and the Transformation of Conservatism in the Twentieth Century. An outgrowth of Jewell’s Boston University dissertation, this closely researched book is very interesting. Using the SSIC (Southern States Industrial Council) as a framework, Jewell traces evolving and shifting strategies on behalf of southern businesses. Politics and intentionality were critical factors in the transformation of the south’s economic profile.

Jewell, a professor of history at Fitchburg State University, begins the book by tracking the emergence of the SSIC in the shadow of the NRA. Neither fully on board nor opposed to the NRA, business rallied around the SSIC to position the south as a special market, different from the north and cities, committed to lower wages and high productivity. Textile firms made up the majority of the SSIC’s membership. Southern business leaders tended to portray themselves as civic leaders, committed to the health and well-being of their communities. It was very much business in the owner-proprietor mindset, not managerial capitalism. Furthermore, business leaders championed traditional regional values, which meant the perseverance of class, gender and race norms. Holding on to that status quo was central to the argument of maintaining southern “values” in a changing world.

The Wagner Act, accordingly, was viewed as a great threat by the SSIC. Organized labor could hardly be aligned with southern values. Voters democratic leanings in the New Deal made SSIC leadership’s commitment to conservatism clear. The response, for southern conservative Democrats has limited national power, was to advance the South as a bastion of free markets and free labor. This is part two of Dollars for Dixie.

The SSIC’s strategies included no minimum wage, linking agriculture to industry, and emphasizing southern exceptionalism. Defensive actions, all geared to preserve a class and race based economic system, kept the organization active through the end of the 1930s. During the war, decentralization of industry became a key focus. After the war, the South and the SSIC tried to position itself as a bulwark of democracy. Local control was the main message. The first political battle was against the FEPC (Fair Employment Practices Commission), which was castigated as meddlesome and intrusive. By the end of the 1940s, the SSIC’s brand of conservatism neither had a home in the national Democratic or Republican parties. Anticommunism was the path forward to garner influence and support, especially as the SSIC downplayed racial conflict. It was, after all, bad for business. The SSIC may have emphasized southern traditions, but in many ways it stressed the South’s alignment with national values. The book does not end with a hard date, but instead a soft landing in the widespread changes affecting the region in the latter half of the 1950s and 1960s. Big picture, as Jewell summarizes, the SSIC’s efforts did not stop federal interventions or competition from abroad, but did shape thinking and policy.

Dollars for Dixie teaches a great deal, from the study of business organizations to the interplay of local and national politics. It underscores the complexity of conservatism, which is best understood in context. The book further expands appreciation of the South, which was and remains far from monolithic. Jewell’s monograph also offers fascinating reminders, too, of the many arguments made over the years to keep wages low and power in place.

David Potash

July 1, 2025 Reviews