[dredmorbius]

Steve Blank's "Secret History" gives a pretty good overview, starting with Terman and WWII, and going heavy on Cold War R&D.

<https://steveblank.com/secret-history/>

Something of an HN favourite as well:

<https://hn.algolia.com/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fsteveblank.com%2Fsec...>