Nearly 1,500 historians of science, medicine, and technology are set to descend on the city of Manchester, UK, in July. I’ll be one of them, delivering a talk titled “Science, Freedom, and the American Way.” You can catch a preview here, on the ICHSTM blog.

Oh, and what does ICHSTM stand for? International Congress for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine. The program looks spectacular.

Update, August 2013: My talk was recorded; ICHSTM added the audio to my blog post. Unfortunately, the sound quality is very poor. Please email me at audrajwolfe at gmail dot com if you’d like to request the text.

There’s a new biography of Louis Agassiz. I reviewed it for C&EN. If you’re interested in Agassiz’s personal relationships, including his marriages, his students, and his Alpine collective, this is the book for you. But if you want to know how Agassiz’s scientific theories of race drove the the concept of “scientific racism” in America for nearly a hundred years, read something else. Might I suggest Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club?

Before scientific exchanges could get off the ground, the U.S. and Soviet governments had to set some ground rules about who could go where. Oddly enough, the Soviets had the upper hand in this: in March 1953 (shortly after the death of Stalin), the Communist nation decided to allow Americans to enter certain parts of the country. The U.S.’s willingness to admit visitors, meanwhile, was limited by a 1952 law that barred the admission of all Communists. (Of course not all Soviet citizens were Communists, but American foreign policy officials assumed that any Soviet citizen allowed to come to the United States was a member of the party.)

A National Security Directive issued in January 1955 outlined a solution: the U.S. would open its borders to Soviet visitors, but only on principles of strict reciprocity. If Americans could visit 70 percent of Soviet cities with populations over 100,000, then Soviets could visit 70 percent of American cities with populations over 100,000.

You can see the map, and a longer explanation, in Slate.

P.S. It turns out that almost all online comments on this map focused on “ICBM missile bases in South Dakota.” The problem? There were no ICBM missile bases in South Dakota in 1955, because ICBMs did not yet exist. More in BoingBoing!

A rarely remembered Cold War factoid is that cultural diplomacy (think touring orchestras, ballet troupes, and wrestling teams) got its start in agricultural exchanges. In early 1955, Lauren Soth, the editor of the Des Moines Register, published an editorial inviting Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to visit Iowa farms. To everyone’s surprise, Khurshchev endorsed the idea. Khurshchev himself wouldn’t come for another four years, but Soth’s editorial set in motion a series of diplomatic and foreign policy discussions that embraced the scientific and technical potential of scientific exchanges. I’m still working through the meaning of these exchanges in the larger picture of Cold War scientific diplomacy (the subject of my next book), but I’m previewing some of my thoughts on the topic in today’s Modern Farmer blog.

Apparently, it’s book review season. I’ve got a new one out in Science on Mark Solovey’s Shaky Foundations: The Politics-Patronage-Social Science Nexus in Cold War America and two more in the pipeline for Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences and Reviews in American History. And, oh yeah, one coming out in C&EN shortly. Updates soon!

Last week I stopped by my old stomping grounds, the Chemical Heritage Foundation, for a conversation with Mat Savilli, an historian of Eastern Europe. We talked about science and ideology, science and freedom, NASA and private industry, and—last but hardly least—the Hungarian Revolution.

So what, exactly, does science have to do with the Hungarian Revolution? The short answer is: cultural diplomacy. Most historians now agree that propaganda funded by (but not carefully supervised by) the Central Intelligence Agency encouraged Hungarian students to believe that American forces would come to their aid if they resisted the Soviet occupation. Tragically, those students were wrong. But while Radio Free Europe’s broadcasts are notorious, they’re only the tip of the iceberg for efforts to sway the hearts and minds of 1950s-era Europeans through cultural propaganda. While some of this propaganda was “gray,” or “black,” meaning that its funding sources were either obscured or denied, “white” propaganda was openly acknowledged by its creators: think Voice of America. Science, particularly genetics, became a front in this cultural battle, as the U.S. foreign policy establishment increasingly embraced scientific exchanges, conferences, and international grants as a way to demonstrate Western support for European scientists.

You can listen in to our conversation at Distillations, CHF’s biweekly podcast.

My interview with New Books in Science, Technology, and Society is now available! Have a listen here. The audio has a couple of bumpy moments, but stick with it to hear my take on Atoms for Peace, the civilian space program, modernization theory, science as ideology, and much, much more!

I love podcasts. Back in my time at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, I helped to start Distillations, a weekly podcast on the past, present, and future of chemistry. So it’s especially happy news to report that I’ll be appearing on two of them in the new future.

This afternoon I’ll be recording a conversation with Patrick Slaney from the Department of History at the University of British Columbia for New Books in Science, Technology, and Society. In early February, it’s back to my old stomping grounds at Distillations for a conversation on the other end of the microphone.

Links to the actual shows to follow in February.

I’ve got my books, which means that you can get yours! Use code NAF to get a 25% discount when ordering directly from Johns Hopkins University Press, or purchase at your favorite local bookstore. You can read an excerpt here.

Johns Hopkins University Press had a pleasant surprise in store for me at last week’s History of Science Society meeting in San Diego: advance copies of my book! The fabulous people in production moved heaven and earth to get bound books to the conference two-and-a-half months ahead of the original publication date (February 2013). Thanks to MIT’s Margy Avery for capturing the moment when Bob Brugger, my steadfast Hopkins editor, made my night.

Alas, the three copies of Competing with the Soviets that the Press sent to HSS are currently the only extant copies, but the rest of the bunch should be reaching the warehouse soon. But fear not! You can place your order with Hopkins now, for shipping very soonish. It’s a bargain, too, at the classroom friendly price of $19.95.