Let Me Explain: Eugene G. Fubini's Life in Defense of America

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Abstract

There is no necessary relationship between fame and power, and great influence is often wielded in willful obscurity. So it was with the irascible, indomitable Eugene Fubini. A physics prodigy who fled Italy when the fascists came to power, his searing intelligence and relentless determination lifted him from obscurity to the highest levels of the Pentagon. Indifferent to anything but results, Fubini worked behind the scenes to shape the strategy and substance of his adopted country's post-World War II defense. Along the way he exerted enormous influence over the development of radar, the rise of the military-industrial complex, the Space Race, and many of the other signature events and movements of mid-twentieth-century American geopolitics. But even as his unbending determination to do things his way earned him the admiration of his colleagues, it left him feared and isolated within his own family. Let Me Explain is a portrait of a man whose unwillingness and inability to compromise paid enormous rewards, and extracted a heavy emotional price.