Book Reviews

Materializing the Military,
edited by Bernard Finn and Barton C. Hacker. London: NMSI Trading Ltd., Science Museum, 2005. ISBN 1 900747 60 X. 183 pp.; 7 3/8” x 9 5/8”; 18 color plates, b&w figures throughout; softbound; index. Parties interested in purchasing a copy may do so either by mail at 1405 South Harrison, Suite 25, Manly Miles Building, East Lansing, Michigan 48823-5245 USA or by email: msupress@msu.edu. The price for this title is $39.95 or £21.95 from overseas.

This is a set of essays that form volume 5 in the Artefacts [sic] Series/Studies in the History of Science and Technology, edited by staff of the Science Museum (London) the Deutsche Museum (Munich) and the Smithsonian Institution (Washington). What is of greatest interest to the museum staff person about this series is the fact that the studies focus on how collections artifacts are used currently in various museum contexts to study and present the historical past to various audiences.

The present volume covers topics as diverse and wide-ranging as fifteenth century Burgundian artillery, to a survey of prosthetic devices used by the U.S. military from the Civil War to the present, to aeronautical sextants, to a critical evaluation of the National Museum of American History exhibition The Price of Freedom: Americans at War. As is to be expected, some studies are rather traditional examinations of the artifacts, and do not stray too far beyond this context, while other essays are “cutting-edge” observations of the various personal, technological and societal stories that historical artifacts can present to the museum-going public. The last two essays—Robert Friedel’s “The Price of Freedom: Americans at War” and Jan Piet Puype’s “Arms on display: core business or illustrations?”—are likely to be the most controversial and debated. Friedel argues that the NMAH exhibition, coming as it did in the shadow of the attacks of 9/11, became a display of American martial treasures presented with all the “bells and whistles” of modern museum display techniques, but without a real point or statement of purpose at the core. Puype’s essay, an earlier version of which was presented in 2004 at a symposium of the International Committee of Museums and Collections of Arms and Military History (ICOMAM) in Delft, both elegantly and eloquently states his belief that museums whose collections include arms must resist editorializing that the objects they hold, and for whose preservation they are responsible, are somehow inherently evil and “guilty” of the violent acts that humans often commit with them.

The end matter includes an index and an appendix of select European military history museums and internet links and sources for additional information. Given that one of the editors is staff in an American museum, and the fact that several of the articles within deal directly with American museological topics and collections, this section should also have included the more important North American institutions with collections of arms.