Stealth

The story of the technology that revolutionized aeronautics and changed modern warfare

The U.S. innovation system fostered different approaches to a specific problem, and stealth mobilized a huge amount of talent and human energy- like many high-tech Cold War ventures. Historians of business, technology, and the military as well as sociologists will find Stealth richly rewarding.

[A] valuable contribution to Cold War history.

In his elegant Stealth, Peter Westwick balanc[es] a modest level of technical detail with a keen eye for the people involved, drawing on extensive interviews and oral histories. The vividness Mr. Westwick achieves is all the more impressive given the secrecy of the stealth world.

A rich, compelling, and eye-opening book.

Westwick does a good job of explaining the engineering principles at work, the competitive instinct of the engineers—which motivated them more than did a patriotic desire to gain the upper hand over the Soviet Union—and the advantages of a close partnership between the private sector and the state.

This concise, highly readable history of the creation, development, and application of one of the most important technologies of the Cold War brings clarity and a thorough understanding to this complex subject.

Peter Westwick is a research professor of history at the University of Southern California and director of the Aerospace History Project at the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West. He is the author or editor of several books, including Into the Black: JPL and the American Space Program, 1976-2004, which won book prizes from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the American Astronautical Society.