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Monkeys, Men, And Missiles: An Autobiography, 1946-1988

Sir Solly Zuckerman
Reviewed by By Gregory F. Treverton
Summer 1989
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Sir Solly Zuckerman
Norton
1989
498 pp.
$22.50

This second volume of Lord Zuckerman's memoirs engagingly demonstrates why his friend, E. E. Cummings, called Zuckerman his "favorite rogue." From anatomy professor to director of the London Zoo and especially in between, as chief scientific adviser to the British government (a job he created and one that for practical purposes retired with him in the 1970s), he moved easily on both sides of the Atlantic during the great decisions about matters nuclear. If he could infuriate his colleagues and if his opinions sometimes turned cranky, he brought to it all a humanity that is captured by his own summary: "What other life could have been better?"

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