Rings of Fire: How an Unlikely Team of Scientists, Ex-Cons, Women, and Native Americans Helped Win World War II

In the wake of disastrous losses during Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy realized it needed to develop better gunsights for its antiaircraft weapons, according to this boisterous debut history. Geophysicist Hughes describes how the quest to deliver precise aiming and tracking, spearheaded by Polaroid founder Edward Land, led to the development of a silver dollar–sized piece of refined calcite known as the “Optical Ring Sight (ORS),” which projected a “bullseye of concentric rings, glowing with stunning, electric color—like rings of fire” when aimed at the sky. Hughes traces the herculean efforts on the part of a colorful cross section of Americans to find, extract, process, and refine the rare calcite deposits required to mass produce the ORS. This “human kaleidoscope” included ex-convicts, card sharps, Native American shamans, California “desert rats” with artistic inclinations, and young women in Montana called the “Crystal Crackin’ Mamas,” whose work trimming calcite crystals Hughes claims “would challenge some Harvard mineralogy students.” The sprawling narrative follows ORS men who eventually left to fight in Europe and traces ORS technology to the moon, where in 1968 NASA used it to aim cameras for the renowned “Earthrise” photograph. Despite a few ponderously detailed technical explanations, Hughes’s warm knitting together of a “patchwork of personalities” makes for satisfying reading. It’s an upbeat tale of American innovation and can-do-ism. (June)