"[A] valuable contribution to Cold War history." -- Tom Ricks"In his elegant Stealth, Peter Westwick balanc[es] a modest level of technical detail with a keen eye for the people involved, drawing on extensive interviews and oral histories. The vividness Mr. Westwick achieves is all the more impressive given the secrecy of the stealth world." -- Konstantin Kakaes, The Wall Street Journal"A rich, compelling, and eye-opening book." -- Daniel J. Kevles, author of The Physicists"Westwick does a good job of explaining the engineering principles at work, the competitive instinct of the engineersDLwhich motivated them more than did a patriotic desire to gain the upper hand over the Soviet UnionDLand the advantages of a close partnership between the private sector and the state." -- Lawrence Freedman, Foreign Affairs"This concise, highly readable history of the creation, development, and application of one of the most important technologies of the Cold War brings clarity and a thorough understanding to this complex subject.

" -- F. Robert van der Linden, Science"A lucid and lively account of the achievement of what many thought impossible and resisted--sizable attack aircraft essentially invisible to radar. Westwick writes the story of the Stealth bombers on the expansive canvas of southern California, drawing in the security-veiled iconoclasm of the region's aerospace enterprise, the strategic thinking of its post-Vietnam military patrons, the innovations enabled by both computing and technical intuition, thepassionate obsession of the physicists and engineers who envisioned the aircraft, and the differences in the technological cultures between Lockheed and Northrop, the ferociously competitive corporationswhere they turned their ideas into two divergent flight-ready realities. A rich, compelling, and eye-opening book." --Daniel J. Kevles, Professor of History Emeritus, Yale University, author of The Physicists"As Peter Westwick notes in his elegant Stealth: The Secret Contest to Invent Invisible Aircraft, U.S. wartime radar research was bigger than the Manhattan Project.

Westwick's stated goal is to write the story of the engineers and midlevel military officers who champion new military technologies history from the middle (a term he borrows from the historian Paul Kennedy ). Mr. Westwick pulls it off by balancing a modest level of technical detail with a keen eyefor the people involved, drawing on extensive interviews and oral histories. The vividness Mr. Westwick achieves is all the more impressive given the secrecy of the stealth world." --Konstantin Kakaes,The Wall Street Journal"In his excellent new book, Stealth, Peter Westwick argues that the solution was the product of a host of special circumstances, fortuitous geography, and the aggregation of thousands of innovative and highly skilled individuals in Southern California. This concise, highly readable history of the creation, development, and application of one of the most important technologies of the Cold War brings clarity and a thorough understanding to this complex subject."--F.

Robert van der Linden, Science Magazine.