An exploration of the age-old complicity between skywatchers and warfighters, from your best-selling author of Astrophysics for folks in a Hurry.

In this fascinating foray in to the centuries-old relationship between research and army power, acclaimed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and writer-researcher Avis Lang examine how the methods and equipment of astrophysics have already been enlisted in the support of war. ‘The overlap is definitely strong, and the data moves in both directions,’ say the writers, about Item to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics as well as the Army because astrophysicists and armed forces planners care about many of the same factors: multi-spectral recognition, ranging, tracking, imaging, high floor, nuclear fusion, and access to space. Tyson and Lang contact it a ‘curiously complicit’ alliance. ‘The universe is both the greatest frontier and the highest of high grounds,’ they write. ‘Shared by both space scientists and space warriors, it’s a laboratory for one and a battlefield for the additional. The explorer wants to understand it; the soldier wants to dominate it. But without the proper technology–which is pretty much the same technology for both parties–nobody will get to it, function in it, scrutinize it, dominate it, or utilize it to their advantage and somebody else’s disadvantage.’

Spanning early celestial navigation to satellite-enabled warfare, Accessory to Battle is a richly researched and provocative examination of the intersection of science, technology, industry, and force that will expose Tyson’s an incredible number of devotees to another sizing of how the universe provides designed our lives and our world.