A revised edition of a very successful 1983 work, "Touching Base" remains a standard work on the development of professional baseball in the first three decades of the twentieth century. The author and publisher should be commended for making this revision available in an inexpensive paperback edition.

In this work Steven Riess, on the faculty of Northwestern University, explores the history of baseball--truly the national pastime in this era--as it became in the first part of the twentieth century the preeminent sporting activity in the United States. He notes that there are many myths about this sport that have informed our perspective on the rise of the sport, and seeks to explore how these arose and explodes or revises many of them.

Beginning with an excellent historiographical essay on the study of baseball history, much updated since the 1983 edition, Riess places the sport's history in the larger context of cultural studies in the United States and charts a course for its study as a significant factor during the Progressive era. He then moves on to explore the unique relationship between baseball and the fan, and the sport's relationship to deeply felt societal needs within the United States.

Thereafter Riess considers the relationships between professional baseball and urban politicos and the larger communities that they were a part of. This discussion revolves around several of the key questions that arose in the Progressive era. These include the siting and construction of baseball parks and the role of the public/private partnership in bringing them to fruition; the propriety of playing baseball games on Sundays and the repeal of "Blue Laws"; and the manner in which the game was promoted to the public by both the owners and the leaders of the larger community.

In each case, Riess focuses on examples drawn from Atlanta, New York, and Chicago. Certainly New York and Chicago are the two most significant major league cities of the era, although it would have been interesting to have seen more examples from places like Boston, St. Louis, and Philadelphia, each of which had two teams. Atlanta has an important place in this study because of its central role in minor league baseball with the legendary "Crackers." Again, additional experiences drawn from other stellar minor league cities of the Progressive era, such as those in the Pacific Coast League, would have broadened the study.

These are minor objections to be sure; this study is one of the most important ever to appear in sports history. It is a must read for anyone who seeks to understand the history of baseball and its relationship to larger American society. As such, it has taken an enormous stride beyond the usual historical treatments of baseball with their emphasis on exploits on the field and heroes of the diamond to ask and seek to answer fundamental questions about America culture and its development in the twentieth century.

To help win the cold war the United States created a set of research institutions throughout the nation with the mission of ensuring that cutting edge science and technology found its way into the defense establishment. This set of "National Laboratories" had become so powerful by 1961 that President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address warned the American people not only about the "military-industrial complex" but also of the "danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite." These laboratories have been under the nominal authority of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and later the Department of Energy (DoE). They included several entities associated with the Manhattan Project of World War II--Argonne, Berkeley, Brookhaven, Los Alamos, and Oak Ridge--as well as later additions, such as the Lawrence Livermore installation. Together, these facilities undertook extensive strategic weapons research and development during a forty-year cold war.

This collection of laboratories, manufacturing plants, test sites, and think tanks possess complex origins and evolution and have attracted sustained historical inquiry. "The National Labs" is a fine addition to this extensive and sophisticated literature. It works best as a synthesis of previous arguments about the role of these weapons labs in recent American history and as a vehicle for understanding the relationship between American science and the modern federal establishment.

Author Peter J. Westwick coins a new term, "systemicity," as a unifying theme in this study, in the process emphasizing his contention that these facilities may only be understood as a diverse collection unified by a common goal and head but with significant centrifugal tendencies. For Westwick "systemicity" involves a changing set of alliances and rivalries central to the evolution of these weapons labs, negotiations abounding among those representing the various facilities and divergent priorities. These labs jockeyed for position and specialized or diversified in various areas to ensure primacy within the system. Their competition ensured the honing of skills perhaps not possible otherwise.

No doubt, "systemicity" as Westwick defines it has long been present, although one could question the value of advocating new jargon for what may be viewed as an obvious set of interactions. Similar interlocking themes may be seen in other distributed organizations ranging from such federal entities as NASA and the FAA, to private corporations such as General Motors and public/private entities such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting or Intelsat.

Regardless of Westwick's creation of jargon "The National Labs" makes an important contribution to knowledge about the evolution of this set of research institutions between 1947, when the AEC began operation, and 1974, when DoE took over responsibility for overseeing them. He traces the evolution of the labs from their origins as the developers of nuclear weapons, reactors, and other technologies of destruction to diversification into physical, biomedical, and other types of research.

Throughout, these labs have profoundly affected ours lives and our understanding of nature. The broadness of their research, the high costs associated with operating them, and the importance of discoveries coming out of them ensures that this is an important subject of study. Westwick's synthesis is a valuable entrée into how these scientific institutions both altered and reflected the values of United States during the cold war.

This is a very fine book that is sure to benefit all readers interested in America's adventure in space. Tom Stafford is one of America's most significant astronauts, although he is less well known than some of the others. While Stafford's four spaceflights--Gemini VI, Gemini IX, Apollo 10, and Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP)--made critical contributions to the development of American space capability in the pioneering era of the 1960s and 1970s, his efforts since the 1970s as the unofficial ambassador to the Soviet Union for space and his key roles in defining space policy in the United States have been even more critical to the evolution of human space flight. One senior NASA official has said, and I agree with the assessment, that Stafford's efforts have shaped every important policy issue affecting human spaceflight for the last quarter century. In these arenas of Stafford's career this book makes important contributions to understanding. Stafford, furthermore, has a credible and exceptionally capable space writer to assist him in putting this book together. Michael Cassutt is the author of many other books, including one with Deke Slayton. Both Stafford and Cassutt deserve credit for presenting a complex person and complex era clearly and concisely.

This book may also become a benchmark in the historiography of human spaceflight because of its insights into the American/Soviet relationship in space. There have been since the 1950s no two spaceflight programs that have been more closely tied than those of the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia, sometimes as rivals and at other instances as cooperative efforts. Stafford has played a key role in both the rivalry and the cooperation. This autobiography discusses the push and pull of these two programs and demonstrates that even as competition reigned in the 1970s a thawing was taking place that led eventually to the cooperative construction of the International Space Station (ISS) at the end of the twentieth century. Because of Stafford's close association with Soviet leaders and cosmonauts beginning in 1971, as well as during the ASTP program, in the early 1990s he was privy to many of the negotiations and served as a means of back channel communication between Russian and U.S. leaders that led to bringing Russia into the ISS program. That story cannot be adequately told without Stafford's account of what took place in the negotiations.

This book provides a valuable first-person account of significant aspects of human spaceflight since the 1970s. It has appeal not only to specialists as a record of a principal actor in the arena, but also to spaceflight enthusiasts who want intimate accounts by astronauts.

This book is by far the best technical history of the Space Shuttle, presenting an overview of the vehicle's development and use. It begins with a discussion of the origins of the goal of winged spaceflight in the 1920s, extends through the Dyna Soar, lifting body, and X-plane research until the decision to proceed with the Space Shuttle in 1972. It then goes into great detail about the shuttle's design and development effort in the 1970s and then discusses in some detail the first 100 missions of the program since 1981. In every case Jenkins offers an excellent technical analysis of all aspects of the vehicle. This book is the place to start in any effort to understand the history of the Space Shuttle. When the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) started investigating the shuttle accident of February 1, 2003, its members read this book as background to their important work. Jenkins soon became a staff member supporting the CAIB and his expertise showed in the final report.

What is it about the Moon that captures the fancy of humankind? A silvery disk hanging in the night sky, it conjures up images of romance and magic. It has been counted upon to foreshadow important events, both of good and ill, and its phases for eons served humanity as its most accurate measure of time. With the invention of the telescope at the turn of the seventeenth century-coinciding with the rise of the scientific revolution-the Moon took on new meaning as a tangible place with mountains and valleys and craters that could be named and geological features and events that could be studied.

Geologist Scott L. Montgomery has produced a richly detailed analysis of how the Moon has been visualized in Western culture through the ages, revealing the faces it has presented to philosophers, writers, artists, and scientists for nearly three millennia. To do this, he has drawn on a wide array of sources that illustrate the changing concept of nature and the significance of heavenly bodies from classical antiquity to the dawn of modern science.

Montgomery especially focuses on the seventeenth century, when the Moon was first mapped and its features named. He explores in depth the literary works of Francis Godwin's "Man in the Moone" and Cyrano de Bergerac's "L'autre monde." But he also carries the story to the present, showing how humanity has over time elevated the Moon to a sublime level.

As Montgomery concluded, humans have always assigned a close approximation of the Earth to lunar ideas. When we ultimately colonize the Moon the irony is that we will be setting up shop on a world steeped in a deep human tradition of imagination and history. This is a superb work that explains far more effectively than other works on the subject, the lure of the Moon for humanity.

The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission completed in 2001 was the first to orbit and eventually land on an asteroid. That fact makes it significant. The fact that the mission was an unqualified success-when a success for NASA was truly critical in the aftermath of two successive failures with Mars probes in 1999-makes it rare. The fact that it was conducted by the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory over the protests of the mighty Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA's traditional solar system exploration center, makes it politically sensitive. The fact that the NEAR team performed the mission on the cheap, spending less than $150 million, makes it unprecedented for deep space probes. The fact that it returned thousands of images, spectra, and other measurements about the large near-Earth asteroid 433 Eros makes it scientifically relevant.

After a long gestation period, NEAR began its voyage to Eros on 17 February 1996, the first mission flown under NASA's new Discovery program, a series of low-cost planetary science projects. NEAR finally moved into orbit around Eros on 14 February 2000, roughly a year later than intended.

Throughout 2000, NEAR explored Eros offering spectacular pictures and a rich harvest of spectroscopy data. At the conclusion of the mission, on 12 February 2001, the mission team landed it on the surface of Eros. Although the NEAR spacecraft was not designed to survive landing, its instruments remained operational until 1 March 2001.

In "Asteroid Rendezvous" several of the scientists and engineers who conducted the NEAR mission describe it in their own words from initial concept studies through development, launch, and cruise operations. The book is liberally illustrated throughout with both stunning images from the mission and explanatory diagrams.

"Asteroid Rendezvous" is long on description and celebration and short on analysis and critical examination. Even so, it is a very interesting book, and a fine start in documenting the history of this important mission. It will be of interest to amateur astronomers and general readers who want to know about the American space program. It will serve as grist for future serious historical studies of planetary exploration.

I love the naughty Christine displayed in some of these songs. The title cut is classic Lavin, irreverent, witty, and on the mark. "Piranha Women in the Avacado Jungle of Death," a film I have actually seen--I'm hesitant to admit--inspired one of the best songs of the album. I also found "The Piper" a poignant commentary on our culture. Most of the rest I have either on other Lavin albums or they are not terribly memorable. I'm a fan, and I gave this CD four stars only because I really enjoy the few offerings I mention here.

Charles J. Gross undertook to write an up-to-date synthesis of American military aviation, something that does not exist, and succeeded admirably. He argues that for all of the arguments from air power advocates in favor of the use of the airplane for combat operations to the exclusion of ground and naval forces, we are still dependent on land, sea, and air forces as a balanced set of assets for the execution of military power. This is an important issue in the current world, as modern strategists echo the arguments of Billy Mitchell and others about the primacy of the airplane. This book is an important corrective to such overzealousness and an important reminder of the way in which the various combat forces interact.

I bought this CD because I have enjoyed Christine Lavin ever since I heard her song, "Planet X," about astronomer Clyde Tombaugh and Pluto. It was funny, witty, and insightful. Here is a person who knows and cares something about planetary astronomy! I have also liked "Four Bitchin' Babes" since my wife bought me one of their CDs. This CD combines the best of both, Christine Lavin as one of the "Four Bitchin Babes." I like the humerous songs best. "Bald Headed Men" is a tribute all those so challenged, singing the praises of the likes of Yul Brenner, Patrick Stewart, and Michael Jordan. "Butter" is an ode to fattening foods of bygone times. Other cuts are not quite so memorable, but the album is always entertaining.

The author ruminates on the scarred spaceflight culture that Apollo created and the later space program destroyed. She visits Roswell, New Mexico, with its alien kitsch, and the Kennedy Space Center and Cocoa Beach, Florida, with its gigantic rocket assembly buildings and launch complexes and reminders of the heyday of Apollo, when humans went to the Moon. Now, more than half of the world's population has been born since the last Apollo mission to the Moon in December 1972, and those exciting events seem much less real than previously. She also explores the frontiers of cyperspace, suggesting that this may become the final frontier instead of the Moon and Mars and other places in the universe.