
Accessory to War
The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military
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Narrated by:
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Courtney B. Vance
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Neil deGrasse Tyson - introduction
About this listen
New York Times Bestseller
An exploration of the age-old complicity between skywatchers and warfighters, from the best-selling author of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry.
In this fascinating foray into the centuries-old relationship between science and military power, acclaimed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and writer-researcher Avis Lang examine how the methods and tools of astrophysics have been enlisted in the service of war. "The overlap is strong, and the knowledge flows in both directions," say the authors, because astrophysicists and military planners care about many of the same things: multi-spectral detection, ranging, tracking, imaging, high ground, nuclear fusion, and access to space. Tyson and Lang call it a "curiously complicit" alliance.
"The universe is both the ultimate frontier and the highest of high grounds," they write. "Shared by both space scientists and space warriors, it’s a laboratory for one and a battlefield for the other. The explorer wants to understand it; the soldier wants to dominate it. But without the right technology—which is more or less the same technology for both parties—nobody can get to it, operate in it, scrutinize it, dominate it, or use it to their advantage and someone else’s disadvantage."
Spanning early celestial navigation to satellite-enabled warfare, Accessory to War is a richly researched and provocative examination of the intersection of science, technology, industry, and power that will introduce Tyson’s millions of fans to yet another dimension of how the universe has shaped our lives and our world.
©2018 Neil deGrasse Tyson and Avis Lang (P)2018 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Extraordinary....A feast of history, an expert tour through thousands of years of war and conquest....Condenses multiple bodies of work into one important, comprehensive and coherent story of the symbiotic developments of astrophysics and war....The lesson is not merely a wake-up call for astrophysicists, but for all of us, for anyone with the misapprehension that science somehow marches on separate from the rest of culture."—Jennifer Carson, New York Times Book Review
"Through ample research and nimble storytelling, Tyson and [Lang] trace the long and tangled relationship between state power and astronomy....Deep and eloquent."—Joshua Sokol, Washington Post
"Fascinating....Retells the history of space exploration, and of the Cold War, excelling in bringing forth the entangled advances of science and military interests....The book’s message rings like a wake-up call."—Marcelo Gleiser, NPR
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Story
In The Field of Blood, Joanne B. Freeman recovers the long-lost story of physical violence on the floor of the US Congress. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, she shows that the Capitol was rife with conflict in the decades before the Civil War. Legislative sessions were often punctuated by mortal threats, canings, flipped desks, and all-out slugfests. When debate broke down, congressmen drew pistols and waved Bowie knives. One representative even killed another in a duel. Many were beaten and bullied in an attempt to intimidate them into compliance, particularly on the issue of slavery.
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fascinating look at an untold aspect of US.history
- By P. Cardella on 09-27-18
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We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families
- Stories from Rwanda
- By: Philip Gourevitch
- Narrated by: Philip Gourevitch
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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An unforgettable firsthand account of a people's response to genocide and what it tells us about humanity. This remarkable audiobook chronicles what has happened in Rwanda and neighboring states since 1994, when the Rwandan government called on everyone in the Hutu majority to murder everyone in the Tutsi minority.
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Things you'd never imagine
- By LEE on 12-27-19
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Civilized to Death
- The Price of Progress
- By: Christopher Ryan
- Narrated by: Christopher Ryan
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Most of us have instinctive evidence the world is ending - balmy December days, face-to-face conversation replaced with heads-to-screens zomboidism, a world at constant war, a political system in disarray. We hear some myths and lies so frequently that they feel like truths: Civilization is humankind’s greatest accomplishment. Progress is undeniable. Count your blessings. You’re lucky to be alive here and now. Civilized to Death counters the idea that progress is inherently good, arguing that the "progress" defining our age is analogous to an advancing disease.
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I couldn't stop listening.
- By Andrew in Ohio on 10-08-19
By: Christopher Ryan
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Metazoa
- Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind
- By: Peter Godfrey-Smith
- Narrated by: Mitch Riley, Peter Godfrey-Smith
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Dip below the ocean’s surface and you are soon confronted by forms of life that could not seem more foreign to our own: sea sponges, soft corals, and serpulid worms, whose rooted bodies, intricate geometry, and flower-like appendages are more reminiscent of plant life or even architecture than anything recognizably animal. Yet these creatures are our cousins. As fellow members of the animal kingdom — the Metazoa— they can teach us much about the evolutionary origins of not only our bodies, but also our minds.
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Philosophy Meets Biology
- By aaron on 01-22-21
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Relentless Strike
- The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command
- By: Sean Naylor
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 19 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Relentless Strike tells the inside story of Joint Special Operations Command, the secret military organization that, during the past decade, has revolutionized counterterrorism, seamlessly fusing intelligence and operational skills to conduct missions that hit the headlines and those that have remained in the shadows - until now. Because JSOC includes the military's most storied special operations units - Delta Force, SEAL Team Six, the 75th Ranger Regiment - as well as America's most secret aviation and intelligence units, this is their story, too.
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Horrible narrator
- By Michael on 08-19-19
By: Sean Naylor
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Operation Pineapple Express
- By: Scott Mann
- Narrated by: Lt. Col. Scott Mann
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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In April 2021, an urgent call was placed from a Special Forces operator serving overseas. The message was clear: Get Nezam out of Afghanistan now. Nezam was part of the Afghan National Army’s first group of American-trained commandos; he passed through Fort Bragg’s legendary Q course and served alongside the US Special Forces for over a decade. But Afghanistan’s government and army were on the edge of collapse, and Nezam was receiving threatening texts from the Taliban.
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amazing, uplifting, heart wrenching
- By Lisa L. Weinley on 09-13-22
By: Scott Mann
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The Unexpected Spy
- From the CIA to the FBI, My Secret Life Taking Down Some of the World's Most Notorious Terrorists
- By: Tracy Walder, Jessica Anya Blau
- Narrated by: Devon Sorvari
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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The Unexpected Spy is the riveting story of Walder's tenure in the CIA and, later, the FBI. In high-security, steel-walled rooms in Virginia, Walder watched al-Qaeda members with drones as President Bush looked over her shoulder and CIA Director George Tenet brought her donuts. She tracked chemical terrorists and searched the world for Weapons of Mass Destruction. She created a chemical terror chart that someone in the White House altered to convey information she did not have or believe, leading to the Iraq invasion.
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This book is word redacted CIA review
- By Keribee on 02-25-20
By: Tracy Walder, and others
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The Disordered Cosmos
- A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred
- By: Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
- Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the leading physicists of her generation, Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is also one of fewer than one hundred Black American women to earn a PhD from a department of physics. Her vision of the cosmos is vibrant, buoyantly nontraditional, and grounded in Black and queer feminist lineages. Dr. Prescod-Weinstein urges us to recognize how science, like most fields, is rife with racism, misogyny, and other forms of oppression. She lays out a bold new approach to science and society, beginning with the belief that we all have a fundamental right to know and love the night sky.
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Stunning
- By Amazon Customer on 04-05-21
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The Longest Minute
- The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906
- By: Matthew J. Davenport
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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At 5:12 am on April 18, 1906, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck San Francisco, catching most of the city asleep. For approximately forty-eight seconds, shock waves buckled streets, shattered water mains, collapsed buildings, crushed hundreds of residents to death, and trapped many alive. Matthew Davenport draws on letters, diaries, unpublished memoirs, and previously unearthed archival records, as well as interviews with engineers and geologists, to combine history and science to tell the dramatic true story of one of the greatest disasters in American history.
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History told from those who survived
- By BamaState on 12-26-23
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The Gates of Europe
- A History of Ukraine
- By: Serhii Plokhy
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 15 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Ukraine is currently embroiled in a tense fight with Russia to preserve its territorial integrity and political independence. But today's conflict is only the latest in a long history of battles over Ukraine's territory and its existence as a sovereign nation. As the award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy argues in The Gates of Europe, we must examine Ukraine's past in order to understand its present and future.
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An extraordinarily good book
- By Specs2789 on 03-01-23
By: Serhii Plokhy
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Under a White Sky
- The Nature of the Future
- By: Elizabeth Kolbert
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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That man should have dominion “over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” is a prophecy that has hardened into fact. So pervasive are human impacts on the planet that it’s said we live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. The question we now face is: Can we change nature, this time in order to save it? Elizabeth Kolbert, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction, takes a hard look at the new world we are creating.
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Feel Sorry For Your Grandchildren
- By Allen Moody on 02-28-21
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Alien Earths
- The New Science of Planet Hunting in the Cosmos
- By: Dr. Lisa Kaltenegger
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Dr. Lisa Kaltenegger
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Riveting and timely, a look at the research that is transforming our understanding of the cosmos in the quest to discover whether we are alone.
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I really enjoyed her perspective on the subject
- By Vladimir Randy Jeune on 11-02-24
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T
- The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone That Dominates and Divides Us
- By: Carole Hooven
- Narrated by: Rachel Perry
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Through riveting personal stories and the latest research, Harvard evolutionary biologist Carole Hooven shows how testosterone drives the behavior of the sexes apart and how understanding the science behind this hormone is empowering for all.
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I wanted more science
- By L on 09-04-21
By: Carole Hooven
What listeners say about Accessory to War
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- Lucas Hicks
- 03-04-20
Reality is not linear
Excellent commentary on the nonlinear and morally gray aspects of Human progress, and the necessity of such.
Tough imagery.
Solid performance.
Recommended
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5 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 10-10-18
An amazing book. Makes you think.
Blazed through the book. It contains amazing facts, Well reasoned arguments and makes you think about the direction that we should all start to work towards in everyday life, given the past and the direction that are currently on.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Michael
- 12-12-18
Vast information that touches seemingly everything
Absolutely incredible in its forging path to bring humility to every member of humanity.
Thank you.
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- Kevin
- 01-22-19
Attention Demanding?
This book is filled with interesting facts. Details about historical events that one does not really learn in school.
I like how this book helped me understand our recent past better. As someone who is a big space/Sci-Fi fan, this book helped me ground myself and make more educated guesses as to where the future could be leading.
At times one feels like there are so many facts that it is easy to drift off I to other thought, and one ends up afraid that one will have to re-listen large portions, yet strangely enough it’s a very simple book to understand. So it’s even ok to go on a tangent every now and then.
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- Alexander A Ferencin
- 10-24-18
Made His Point and Kept Making It
I expected this book, by a well-respected and famous scientist, to be engaging and provacative. Instead Tyson and Lang make their point about the military-science-industrial complex in the first chapter and continue to give you history lessons and dry anecdotes along the way. I find that it would have made a more interesting podcast or YouTube mini-series.
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- Amazon Customer
- 04-23-19
Amazing and important.
All humans should read this to understand how space effects their life. I for one learned a great deal about aerospace.
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- James
- 06-12-19
Brilliant
Tyson nails the unspoken relationship with war and human/scientific progress. I really enjoyed this book.
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- j.simmons
- 03-20-20
A nice reality check.
I loved the history and overview but the chapter content chronology threw me off at times.
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- JuliAnnePD
- 12-04-22
Fascinating connections highlighted
There is a lot of information to digest as the history of technological advancements to understand astronomy and physics is explained, and the impact on warfare and political dominance is connected.
Courtney Vance's vocal timber, cadence, and emphasis helps to make this a thoroughly enjoyable listen as well as to help grasp the gravity of the words written.
it took me longer than usual to listen, as I found it necessary to pause and consider the information before continuing on, and this audiobook certainly had me questioning my previous understanding of 'history' within this new frame.
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- Amazon Customer
- 10-11-18
A brilliant idea, auspicious beginning, and hurried, sloppy (outsourced?) ending.
I purchased an Amazon Audible to listen to in the car, and a hardcover book from Barnes and Noble. A book on the interplay between war and “astrophysics“ (and its precursors) is a brilliant idea. The first 6 chapters of the book is an interesting (at times captivating) account of scientific discovery “piggy-backing” on war and greed, and vice versa — and Tyson at his best. Well-researched and liberally annotated, the main storyline still shines through cleverly presented but unobtrusive historic facts and references. However, things go downhill towards the end of chapter 6 (in hardcover only - the Audible chapters are shorter). The Tysonian storyline gradually dries up, substituted with a suffocating swamp of decades-old bureaucratic correspondence and long-forgotten political analysis. I understand that this research material is relevant to the story, but there must still be a story! I wonder if after reading the last chapters 7 and 8 (chapter 9 is a sloppily written, hackneyed, and unfocused conclusion entitled “Time to heal”) Professor Tyson could say “Nailed it, Neil. A litany of loosely connected insignificant, quickly remedied and forgotten bureaucratic dustups with dwarfish Russian and Chinese space agencies is a fitting end to this 10000-year story”.
And even more disappointing than the book (that Professor Tyson betrayed and wantonly abandoned when it was so close to realizing his brilliant idea) is the Audible narration. I like the narrator - Courtney Vance. He is a great artist at the top of his profession. However, instead of hiring great names I’d suggest the Publisher find someone who is 1) broadly knowledgeable about the subject and 2) willing to read the book to familiarize himself with its contents before narrating it for the entire Audible Universe. You see, the narrator isn’t simply a fellow reader who reads the book aloud but apparently is less familiar with the story than his audience is. The narrator is expected to sound like the author. Unfortunately, listening to Mr Vance’s performance is painful... he obviously hadn’t read the book in advance, and his narration sounds like he is perpetually surprised by what Professor Tyson sends his way (even the question mark at the end of a long sentence). Sudden slowdowns and micro-pauses happen as the narrator isn’t quite sure where the story is heading, and this makes for an unpleasant experience even while story is still good. And with chapter 8 “Space power”, the experience becomes unbearable as the narrator himself is probably bored silly by the dry factual presentation into which the initially beautiful story has degenerated by now.
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2 people found this helpful