Publisher Description
Worlds collide in this true story of weather control in the cold war era and the making of Kurt Vonnegut. In the mid-1950s, Kurt Vonnegut takes a job in the PR department at General Electric in Schenectady, where his older brother, Bernard, is a leading scientist in its research lab or House of Magic. Kurt has ambitions as a novelist, and Bernard is working on a series of cutting-edge weather-control experiments meant to make deserts bloom and farmers flourish. While Kurt writes zippy press releases, Bernard builds silver-iodide generators and attacks clouds with dry ice. His experiments attract the attention of the government; weather proved and decisive factor in World War II, and if the military can control the clouds, fog, and snow, they can fly more bombing missions. Maybe weather will even be – as a headline in America Magazine calls it. The New Super Weapon. But when the army takes charge of his cloudseeding project (dubbed Project Cirrus), Bernard begins to have misgivings about the use of his inventions for harm, not to mention the evidence that they are causing alarming changes in the atmosphere. In a fascinating cultural history, Ginger Strand chronicles the intersection of these brothers' lives at a time when the possibilities of science seemed infinite. As the Cold War looms, Bernards struggle for integrity plays out in Kurts evolving writing style. The Brothers Vonnegut reveals how science ability to influence the natural world also influenced one of out most incentive novelists.
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About Ginger Strand
Ginger Strand grew up in Texas, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan, but mostly on a farm in Michigan. The author of the novel Flight, she has published essays and fiction in many places, including Harper’s, the Believer, the Iowa Review, the Gettysburg Review, Swink, Raritan, the New England Review, and Orion, where she is a contributing editor. A former fellow in the Behrman Center for the Humanities at Princeton University, she has received residency grants from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the American Antiquarian Society, as well as a Tennessee Williams scholarship in fiction from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She lives in New York City.
About Sean Runnette
Sean Runnette, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, has also directed and produced more than two hundred audiobooks, including several Audie Award winners. He is a member of the American Repertory Theater company and has toured the United States and internationally with ART and Mabou Mines. His television and film appearances include Two If by Sea, Cop Land, Sex and the City, Law & Order, the award-winning film Easter, and numerous commercials.