Sometime leading up to the twentieth century, Western man found himself a new object of worship: science and its attendant technologies. This worship assumed certain truths, chief among them that by following the immutable laws of nature, one could predict and govern the future. Adam Curtis, whose impetuous essays Century of the Self and The Power of Nightmares have already captivated us, earlier had turned his attention to the dubious concept that we could view “society as a giant rational machine.” A disquieting quartet, Pandora's Box traces the reign of technocracy as it plies great overarching theories of social design in consort with technological advance. From the failed models of the Soviet Union's Five Year Plans to the brinksmanship of nuclear war, encouraged by the Rand Corporation's trust in game theory; from the stumbling British economy, tripped up by erroneous monetarist correctives, to the devastating notion that chemicals such as DDT could hand the reins of nature over to man, Pandora's Box asks us to ponder whether, once removed, the lid can be replaced.