Five best books about scientists in World War II

Stephen Budiansky is the author of fourteen books about military history, intelligence and espionage, science, and the natural world. His most recent book is Blackett’s War, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2013.

For the Wall Street Journal he named a list of the five best books on scientists in World War II, including:

The Wizard War
by R.V. Jones (1978)

Like many British scientists, Jones, a 27-year-old physicist when World War II began, was desperate to contribute to the war effort but wary that the military bureaucracy would shunt him off to some menial and pointless task. In 1939, however, he was offered a role directing Britain's scientific intelligence efforts against Nazi Germany. "A man in that position could lose the war!" he exclaimed when approached about the job. "I'll take it!" Not only a brilliant scientist, Jones was a natural storyteller and a razor-sharp wit, as this insightful and often very entertaining memoir of his war years shows. His dramatic account of the cabinet meeting at which he convinced a skeptical Churchill of his conclusion that the Germans were employing a radio-beam system to guide their bombers to targets over Britain is just one of many remarkable incidents in this well-wrought tale, which underscores that the Allies did not merely outfight the Germans; they outwitted them, too.

Read about another book on the list.

Visit Stephen Budiansky's website.

Read about Budiansky's list of the five best books about the post-Civil War period.

The Page 69 Test: Budiansky's The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox.

--Marshal Zeringue