Despite having little to suggest its future as an international site for science, Boulder, Colorado, rose to prominence as a center of scientific learning in less than two decades. A shifting combination of scientists and sponsors emerged in the post-WWII and Cold War era, giving rise to a landscape littered with interdisciplinary environmental science labs that would become the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and NOAA s Space Weather prediction Center, major players among the many agencies that make up Boulder s science community today. This book chronicles the town s meteoric rise from Scientific Siberia to the smartest town in America, including the characters (such as Walter Orr Roberts) the science, and the policies that shaped the AstroBoulder, home of big science, that we know today. "