Space and Defense
Abstract
This review is dedicated to Lt Gen (ret.) Brent Scowcroft, twice National Security Advisor and one-time head of the Department of Political Science, U.S. Air Force Academy. If he is looking down on our work today, we hope he liked this book, Death of Expertise, by a much admired Naval War College professor and enjoyed our department’s enthusiasm for participating in the conversation. Thank you, Gen Scowcroft (1925-2020).
Naval War College professor Tom Nichols built upon his popular essay in the Atlantic to deliver a blunt warning.1 After a venomous election in 2016 that swept the incumbent party from power, American democracy was in for a rough go. Sir Lawrence Freedman (Emeritus, King’s College, London) employed the term “polemic” to characterize Death of Expertise, and Nichols did take shots at certain celebrities professing bizarre, defiantly unscientific, nostrums for better health. Yet, Nichols, the strategist and foreign policy expert, had a loftier aim and a deeper message in mind than disarming the army of nattering nabobs on American social media.
DOI
10.32873/uno.dc.sd.12.01.1087
Recommended Citation
Coletta, Damon
(2021)
"Book Review: Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters (NY: Oxford University Press, 2017) 252 pp.,"
Space and Defense: Vol. 12:
No.
0, Article 9.
DOI: 10.32873/uno.dc.sd.12.01.1087
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/spaceanddefense/vol12/iss0/9
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