Sellout: How Washington Gave Away America’s Technological Soul, and One Man’s Fight to Bring It Home

Time to reclaim America’s technological base—and military capabilities—from the Chinese, argues this anguished saga of industrial decline. Journalist Bruce (Hostage Nation) profiles brash entrepreneur Jim Kennedy as he lobbies Washington to bolster U.S. production of “rare earth” metals that are critical to advanced weaponry; China has cornered the global market on them, leaving America’s high-tech military vulnerable to embargo. Her admiring profile recounts Kennedy’s battles with an abusive father, dyslexia, and congressional staffers and Pentagon bureaucrats who shrug off the threat, but skates unsatisfyingly past his murkier business wranglings. (Kennedy owns rare earth deposits in Missouri and has a financial stake in government preferments for domestic sources.) Still, the book adroitly examines crucial aspects of economic and national security; it’s an homage to America’s lost military-industrial complex, exploring abandoned mines and factories that once epitomized manufacturing prowess and revisiting breakthroughs at national laboratories from a post-war era of vigorous federal support for advanced technology. The author gives an interesting account of the “molten salt reactor,” a revolutionary nuclear reactor pioneered at U.S. labs but then mothballed; it’s now being developed by the Chinese government. Bruce makes an absorbing and timely plea for government leadership in reviving America’s technological supremacy. [em](June) [/em]