Serafina Cuomo’s thoughtful book is an attempt to corrects the marginalization of the subject of ancient technology and to acknowledge its importance to understanding ancient culture.

The cold war was an era of transition, ornamented with ambivalence, hypocrisy, inconsistency, and paradox. Bringing these issues into focus matters now because we inhabit another era of transition—from cold war to placeless conflicts, from nation-based structures to global flows, from American ascendance to American declension, from just plain weather to global warming.