A Hole in Texas Author:Herman Wouk From the back cover: — The legendary bestselling author of "War and Remembrance", "The Winds of War" and the Pulitzer Prize winning "The Caine Mutiny", returns with his first work of fiction in ten years, a smart and funny look at the often unbelievable, sometimes absurd interplay of science, media and politics. — Guy... more » Carpenter has a prestigious job at NASA, a devoted wife and new baby, and, aside from a troublemaking cat, a settled, quiet life. But things take an unexpected turn when this regular guy finds himself mixed up in an international scandal of enormous proportions.
Years ago, Guy worked on the Superconducting Super Collider, a giant government project dedicated to detecting a tiny, elusive particle called the Higgs boson. Wrangling in Congress shut the project down before it could succeed, but now the Chinese claim to have found the boson. It is a discovery that sends the nation into a panic. How did the Chinese surpass American science? What about the horrific military implications of a Boson Bomb? Is it time to start casting Hollywood's first boson-based blockbuster? An expert is needed to assess the new threat to national security.
Guy is propelled into the center of the media blitz, his old love with a Chinese female physicist resurfaces, a new romance with a beautiful Congresswaman beckons, and the breakup of his happy marriage threatens. In the meantime, Congress holds urgent hearings, Hollywood comes courting, the CIA is investigating, and an unctuous reporter dogs his every step.
Once again, Herman Wouk, the man the New York Times has called "a modern Charles Dickens," exercises his deep insight and considerable comic powers to give us a witty and keen satire---about Washington, the media, and science, and what happens when these three great forces of American culture clash.« less
This is the first novel by Herman Wouk for me and I must say that I really liked it. When the Chinese beat the US to the Higgs boson, astrophysicist, Guy Carpenter gets caught up in the hoopla and has to appear before a congressional hearing on possible charges of a breach in national security. His relationship with the top Chinese scientist and his secret post office box, get him in water with his wife.
There's a lot going on and when the talk involves the superconduction super collider, it gets rather technical. I didn't understand the half of it but it didn't have any impact in my enjoyment of the story.