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Nylon and Bombs: DuPont and the March of Modern America. By Pap A. Ndiaye. Translated by Elborg Forster. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. Pp. vii+289. $45.
Pap A. Ndiaye's fascinating book traces the creation, rise, and fall of the chemical engineer in American society over the course of the twentieth century through the eyes of DuPont. By linking nylon to atomic bombs, two icons of American ingenuity, he demonstrates the intricate ties between the military and civilian society. Three characteristics unite the two seemingly disparate artifacts of Ndiaye's title. First, and most obviously, these objects perhaps more than any others have come to symbolize the twentieth century as a modernist adventure and playground for technologists and technocrats. Nylon, the synthetic creation that conquered the social world by demonstrating its superiority over its natural rivals, sits adjacent to the atomic bomb, the embodiment of our society's ability to harness and break apart nature's most fundamental structures. Side by side, the two reveal our ability to control all that nature has, and to outsmart it as well.
Bombs and nylon also emerge as products uniquely shaped...