Power at Cost: Ontario Hydro and Rural Electrification, 1911–1958 . By Keith R. Fleming · Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1992. xi + 326 pp. Maps, photographs, appendixes, notes, bibliography, and index. $42.95. ISBN 0-7735-0868-6.

TLDR: LesLeslie as discussed by the authors discusses the 1970s, when new federal policy initiatives in energy, biomedical and environmental sciences, and civilian manufacturing technology pointed a number of academic scientists and engineers in fresh directions, though without offering them anything like the financial support they had once enjoyed from defense agencies.

Abstract: rising protests forced MIT to divest Draper's Instrumentation Lab, the change actually made little difference to anyone except on paper. This is not a strident or harshly critical book; but, by the end, one can share Leslie's melancholy appreciation for alternative scientific worlds not driven by the imperatives of national security. \"In the 1970s,\" he concludes, another vision seemed possible when \"new federal policy initiatives in energy, biomedical and environmental sciences, and civilian manufacturing technology pointed a number of academic scientists and engineers in fresh directions, though without offering them anything like the financial support they had once enjoyed from defense agencies\" (p. 254). The arms buildup of Ronald Reagan's presidency, as well as—one must now add—the character of science itself closed the door on that possibility.