The Jasons

The Jasons are a well-guarded group of world-class scientists, briefly outed in the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War, who have been meeting every summer since 1960 to tackle classified problems that the Defense Department cannot solve. Among many stunning innovations, they helped invent our electronic battlefield and Star Wars missile defense technology, and are now looking into ways to improve our intelligence gathering. Recounting the unknown story of these brilliant, stubbornly independent thinkers, Ann Finkbeiner takes advantage of her unprecedented access to this elite group to explore the uncertain bargains between science and politics. It is a story older than Faust and as timely as tomorrow’s headlines.Fascinating, disturbing. Science needs critics like Finkbeiner now more than ever. (The New York Times Book Review)

A true story that reads like a Tom Clancy novel. (Wired)Ann Finkbeiner is a freelance science writer who normally writes about cosmology and who runs the graduate program in science writing at Johns Hopkins University.