We're About to Launch a Costly and Crazy Arms Race in Space." So proclaimed a headline in the Sunday "Outlook" section of the Washington Post last fall. Yet, as Clayton R. Koppes clearly shows, the militarization of America's space program did not begin with the Reagan administration, even though the process has accelerated since Superhawk Casper Weinberger arrived at the Pentagon. Reagan, Weinberger & Co. are, however, merely following a trail that opened with the coming of the New Frontier in 1961 and, in Mr. Koppes' words, with "John F. Kennedy's impetuous decision to send a man to the moon." How far the military exploitation will go—and how many billions it will cost—are questions for politicians to ponder. Nonetheless, just as the bomb at Hiroshima opened a Pandora's box that mankind has failed to close, so the possibilities for a real "Star Wars" will loom ever larger as the arms race in space continues. A specialist in 20th-century American history, particularly scientific and technological history, Mr. Koppes spent four years (1974—78) as a senior research fellow at the California Institute of Technology. He is the author of more than 30 articles and papers on scientific, technological, and environmental topics. Now an associate professor of history at Oberlin College, Mr. Koppes is also the author of JPL and the American Space Program: A History of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a book published by Yale in 1982, and a recipient of the Dexter Prize given by the Society of the History of Technology for the best work in that field to appear over a three-year period. Mr. Koppes is currently completing a book on the oil policies of the U.S. and Britain vis-à-vis Latin America.

While Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's place in American poetry is today somewhere between that of Joyce Kilmer and Edgar Guest, he was one of the most popular poets of his time, his verse, as John Seelye observes, "providing the text, his life the example of what poetry and the poet were in America during a time when both had a popular reach." Mr. Seelye is no stranger to that time, being a specialist in 19th-century American literature. He is also a specialist on the rivers of America and is completing a three-volume work on that subject, one volume of which has already been published. Mr. Seelye is Alumni Distinguished Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.