The authors have done a remarkable amount of research. The hardcover includes over 100 pages of notes; the list of source materials runs 14 pages. Listening to the audiobook, mostly (and commandingly) read by Courtney B. Vance, one is freed from any responsibility to flip back and forth between primary text and notes, creating a wonderful immersion in that extraordinary research. Vance — whose impressive acting career includes multiple military roles, most famously in “The Hunt for Red October” — signals the transitions to lengthy direct quotes with helpful changes of tone, and most of the book is strongly and engagingly acted. The only rough spots are when Vance’s inflections or pauses suggest he may be unsure of the meaning of some of the book’s more technical passages.

The book is clearly organized by scientifically minded authors. While varied and associative enough to be interesting, the writing is always directed toward illuminating the research. But there is literary flair to the language as well. Emanuel Leutze’s famous painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” one of many that illustrate the historical cooperation between astronomy and war, is described with Washington standing at the front, “his right leg planted on the bow as the multiethnic crew of revolutionaries struggles with poles and oars in the ice-choked river and light begins to flood the morning sky. At the commander’s left side hangs a saber; in his right hand is a telescope.” The language moves between the literary and analytical, evenhanded yet passionate. This is not to say the authors don’t have a point of view, about which they are transparent from the onset, but the book lets the facts, and the many first-person quotes, speak for themselves.

To be an informed citizen is a daunting task. We cannot all read reams of military white papers to track the evolving thinking about space dominance or dig up Galileo’s first treatise from 1610. “Accessory to War” condenses multiple bodies of work into one important, comprehensive and coherent story of the symbiotic developments of astrophysics and war. The authors are clear and convincing that war from the “high ground” of space is exponentially more dangerous than any warfare the human race has engaged in thus far, capable of efficiently delivering nuclear bombs, with their power to annihilate the entire planet. They are equally convincing that scientific space endeavors aren’t separable from military ones, and they never were. The lesson is not merely a wake-up call for astrophysicists, but for all of us, for anyone with the misapprehension that science somehow marches on separate from the rest of culture.