SIDEWINDER

In the mid-1950s a small group of overworked, underpaid scientists and engineers, working on a remote base in the Mojave Desert, developed a weapon no one had asked for but that everyone was looking for. Sidewinder is the story of how that unorthodox team at China Lake, led by the visionary Bill McLean, overcame Navy bureaucracy and more heavily funded projects to develop the world’s best air-to-air missile.

Ron Westrum is a professor of sociology and interdisciplinary technology at Eastern Michigan University. He holds degrees from Harvard and the University of Chicago and is also the author of Technologies & Society as well as numerous articles on science, technology and society. He lives in Ann Arbor, MI.