In this thought-provoking book, David Hart challenges the creation myth of post — World War II federal science and technology policy. According to this myth, the postwar policy sprang full-blown from the mind of Vannevar Bush in the form of Science, the Endless Frontier (1945). Hart puts Bush’s efforts in a larger historical and political context, demonstrating in the process that Bush was but one of many contributors to this complex policy and not necessarily the most successful one. Herbert Hoover, Karl Compton, Thurman Arnold, Henry Wallace, Robert Taft, and Curtis LeMay — along with more familiar figures like Bush — are among those whose endeavors he traces.