Eden, Lynn

(Lynn Rachele Eden)

PERSONAL:

Education: University of Michigan, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Stanford University, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Encina Hall, Stanford, CA 94305-6165l; fax: 650-724-5683. E-mail—lynneden@stanford.edu.

CAREER:

Writer, sociologist, historian, editor, researcher, and educator. Stanford University, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford, CA, associate director for research and senior research scholar. Pugwash USA, cochair. Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, instructor in history.

AWARDS, HONORS:

National Book Award finalist, 1973, for Crisis in Watertown; Robert K. Merton Award for best book in science, knowledge, and technology, American Sociological Association, 2004, for Whole World on Fire; Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University, fellow; Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, fellow.

WRITINGS:

Crisis in Watertown: The Polarization of an American Community, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1972.

(With Florence Mars) Witness in Philadelphia, foreword by Turner Catledge, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1977.

(Editor, with Steven E. Miller) Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1989.

(With Daniel Pollak) Ethnopolitics and Conflict Resolution: A Report on a Workshop Held at Stanford University as Part of the MacArthur Consortium on International Peace and Cooperation (Stanford University, University of Minnesota, University of Wisconsin), February 17-19, 1995, Center for International Security and Arms Control (Stanford, CA), 1995.

(Editor) Oxford Companion to American Military History, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS:

Lynn Eden is a writer, educator, sociologist, and historian. She is associate director for research and senior research scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan. As a scholar, she studies issues in Cold War and nuclear history; organizational approaches to security; the American state and security policy; and pursues the general study of science and technology. In the area of international security, Eden concentrates her attention on U.S. foreign and military policy, the social construction of science and technology, arms control, and nuclear policy and homeland security, reported a biographer on the Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation Web site.

Eden's early books concern a pair of sociological crises in small-town America. Crisis in Watertown: The Polarization of an American Community concerns the 1969 troubles faced by Alan Kromholz, a minister at the Watertown Congregational Church in Wisconsin. In response to the political and social atmosphere of the day, and as part of his vision of what a church should be, Kromholz had sought to make the church an agent of change in the fight for overall social and economic justice. Instead, the congregation interpreted Kromholz's actions as an assault on their security and their church. Determined to remove him from his position as minister, the congregation was not even above fabricating charges against him where it suited their agenda. Eventually, they drove him out of his position as head of the church.

Her second book, written with Florence Mars, is Witness in Philadelphia. Here, Eden and Mars recount the story of the June 1964, murders of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi. The deaths of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner stirred protests in Mississippi, and the eventual reactions to the deep-rooted underlying racism behind the murders caused much unrest in the troubled Southern community. Mars was one of the few prominent citizens of the area to express outrage at the death of the three men. The authors explore the murders and their aftermath, as well as the long-term effects the incident had on the area.

Eden served as the editor, with Steven E. Miller, of Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates. The editors present contributions that seek to reach an understanding of the critical underlying issues in the ongoing and often controversial debate over nuclear weapons and arms control.

In Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation, Eden takes a realistic, almost clinical approach to an unthinkable scenario and assesses some long-term flaws in America's nuclear policy and planning for the use of nuclear weapons. "While Lynn Eden covers a number of issues relating to strategic and nuclear applications, her focus is on the lack of comprehensive damage analysis in regard to atomic and nuclear weapons, specifically regarding fire," commented John M. Curatola in the Military Review. In Eden's estimation, "the U.S. government uses flawed methodology and inaccurate data to plan for nuclear war," reported Janne E. Nolan, writing in Science. "This well-written and scrupulously researched book addresses a significant anomaly in the way that the U.S. government has planned for nuclear war," reported Graham Spinardi, writing in the Journal of the History of Science in Society, specifically in underestimating the potential damage of nuclear weapons.

Eden maintains that U.S. planners concentrated their assessments on the physical blast damage that would be caused by a nuclear explosion. While the devastation caused by such a blast would be tremendous, Eden believes that planners have willfully underestimated and even ignored the potential damage of another factor: fire. In Eden's view, the damage caused by uncontrolled mass fires that would occur after a nuclear detonation would likely exceed that caused by the bomb's blast itself. These firestorms would sweep through much larger areas, adding an extraordinary amount of additional damage to that caused by the initial explosion. "The actual level of lethality, according to Lynn Eden's analysis, could be two to five times greater than predicted in the detailed models of damage expectancies found in American targeting plans," Nolan reported. Eden finds that the unwillingness of war planners to consider the effects of fire could rest in the difficulty of generating accurate assessments of the potential damage of such an unpredictable force. However, she also finds that there are experts available who can make such calculations and estimate the potential damage from a firestorm. With this in mind, she suggests that the Pentagon and other military sources have willfully neglected to include firestorm damage in their assessments, perhaps out of arrogance or perhaps out of simple bureaucratic inertia. Instead, planners concentrate their efforts on the unlikely concept of precision bombing and selective elimination of targets in a nuclear strike, based on predictable outcomes from blast damage. "What analysts fail to see is that this conclusion is an artifact of their own organizational activities. It is driven by self-reinforcing knowledge-laden routines that date back to World War II, not by truths inherent in nature. This differential, path-dependent understanding of blast and fire is at the center of Lynn Eden's masterful analysis of the incomplete prediction of nuclear weapons damage," commented Administrative Science Quarterly reviewer Karl E. Weick.

On a larger level, Eden "seeks to demonstrate how institutional knowledge often leaves out critical facts," often leading to disastrous consequences when incomplete or inaccurate information becomes the basis for policy and action, noted Lawrence D. Freeman in Foreign Affairs. Eden "demonstrates that getting the right information to the right people working on the cutting edge is difficult, and that engineers and scientists can believe they are doing what is right even though they have unknowingly made terrible mistakes," observed Peter Zimmerman in Physics Today. In the end, Weick stated, "organizations are good at solving new problems, but not necessarily at solving novel problems. As Eden makes clear, blindspots are tough to remedy."

"Whole World on Fire easily qualifies as a rarity: careful, tenacious, and comprehensive research, acute analyses, an elegant synthesis of the history of the U.S. military-scientific establishment, and a lucid exposition of scientific and technological issues," commented Guy Oakes in the Journal of American History. "As a study of the interplay among science, technology, organizations, and history, Lynn Eden's book makes a valuable contribution to the literature," observed Charles E. Costanzo, writing in the Air & Space Power Journal. Eden's work, Nolan commented, "is a significant contribution and should be read by anyone who is concerned about the accountability and effectiveness of powerful American organizations. The consequences of institutional myopia can be catastrophic."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Administrative Science Quarterly, March, 2005, Karl E. Weick, review of Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation, p. 136.

Air & Space Power Journal, summer, 2004, Charles E. Costanzo, review of Whole World on Fire, p. 123.

American Journal of Sociology, November, 2005, David Cunningham, review of Whole World on Fire, p. 935.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, September, 2004, S.G. Rabe, review of Whole World on Fire, p. 145; June, 2007, S.G. Rabe, review of Whole World on Fire, p. 1693.

Foreign Affairs, winter, 1989-90, Andrew J. Pierre, review of Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates, p. 208; January-February, 2004, Lawrence D. Freedman, review of Whole World on Fire, p. 171.

Isis, September 1, 2005, Graham Spinardi, review of Whole World on Fire, p. 459.

Journal of American History, June, 2005, Guy Oakes, review of Whole World on Fire, p. 275.

Journal of the History of Science in Society, September, 2005, Graham Spinardi, review of Whole World on Fire, p. 459.

Military Review, March 1, 2006, John M. Curatola, review of Whole World on Fire, p. 116.

New Scientist, March 27, 2004, Rob Edwards, "We'll All Fry Together," p. 48.

Physics Today, April, 2005, Peter Zimmerman, review of Whole World on Fire, p. 62.

Reference & Research Book News, April, 1990, review of Nuclear Arguments, p. 35.

Science, March 19, 2004, Janne E. Nolan, "Measuring the Unthinkable," review of Whole World on Fire, p. 1772.

SciTech Book News, June, 1990, review of Nuclear Arguments, p. 31.

Technology and Culture, April, 2005, Gregg Herken, review of Whole World on Fire, p. 453.

Virginia Quarterly Review, summer, 2004, Spencer D. Bakich, review of Whole World on Fire, p. 258.

ONLINE

Pugwash USA,http://www.pugwash.org/ (May 22, 2008).

Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation Web site,http://cisac.stanford.edu/ (May 22, 2008), author biography.