In The Triumph of Improvisation, James Graham Wilson takes a long view of the end of the Cold War, from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 to Operation Desert Storm in January 1991. Drawing on deep archival research and recently declassified papers, Wilson argues that adaptation, improvisation, and engagement by individuals in positions of power ended the specter of a nuclear holocaust. Amid ambivalence and uncertainty, Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, George Shultz, and George H. W. Bush—and a host of other actors—engaged with adversaries and adapted to a rapidly changing international environment and information age in which global capitalism recovered as command economies failed. Eschewing the notion of a coherent grand strategy to end the Cold War, Wilson paints a vivid portrait of how leaders made choices; some made poor choices while others reacted prudently, imaginatively, and courageously to events they did not foresee. A book about the burdens of responsibility, the obstacles of domestic politics, and the human qualities of leadership, The Triumph of Improvisation concludes with a chapter describing how George H. W. Bush oversaw the construction of a new configuration of power after the fall of the Berlin Wall, one that resolved the fundamental components of the Cold War on Washington’s terms.
This book traces the emergence of the ideas and institutions that evolved to give people mastery over their own destiny through the force of public opinion. The Greek belief in citizen participation is shown as the ground upon which the idea of public opinion began and upon which it grew. For Wilson, public opinion is always an "orderly force," contributing to social and political life. Wilson appraises the influence of modern psychology, with its techniques and ideas, and the slow and at first scarcely recognized appearance of the methodologies that would enable people not only to measure the opinions of others, but to mold them as well. He examines the relation of the theory of public opinion to the intellectuals, the middle class, and the various revolutionary and proletarian movements of the modern era. He also considers the position of ordinary people, and the circumstances in which the individual may refuse to follow the opinions of the experts are succinctly and movingly analyzed. This book is a historical and philosophical evaluation of a concept that has played a decisive part in history and whose overwhelming force is today most peculiarly underestimated. The author's penetrating insight brings an understanding that is invaluable at a time when public opinion, the very force developed to enable the ruled to restrain their rulers, has become itself controllable and attempts to manipulate it are made by those who would impose their will upon their fellow men.
Offering a wealth of useful ideas, this edition provides techniques and skills for any manager or team member looking for guidance on their changing role in the modern organization. It has been updated to provide the latest thinking in the area.
Corporate Crime and its Victims It's not gold that glitters but health stolen from past workers. Poisoned by chemicals they used, many are sick and dying. The story reaches a journalist. Inquiries lead her to a new company, Gilt Investments, a public float promising an investor bonanza. It keeps the valued parts and leaves the risk behind. The workers get nothing. The clock is ticking. Can it be stopped? The publicity for Gilt Investments claims risk free investment and a gilded future. Is it real or is it golden spin, a new public mask of glitter to hide the guilt behind. Corporate lawyer, Stephen, knows Gilt Investments will give a great return. His own bonus and share allocation promise a cash bonanza. It is all set to go. He delivers the Prospectus to the printer to send out to select clients. It goes live in a week. But as the final hours tick away a journalist rings. A desperately ill woman has contacted her, she claims the past company has poisoned her. The more the journalist looks the worse the story becomes, not one but dozens of victims. And there is a trail of deception by the former company to hide the truth of what happened three decades ago. As she digs deeper she finds other victims, paid a pittance and then hushed up. Some are dead now but many others are alive and sick. The journalist find out an imminent company restructure will separate a murky past from a glittering future. As she gets closer to the truth the company turns to sexual blackmail, used against her. It is a race on three counts, to stop the float clock so the assets don't vanish, to keep the victims alive to testify and to keep her own past buried, lest it derail it all.
In America's Cold Warrior, James Graham Wilson traces Paul Nitze's career path in national security after World War II, a time when many of his mentors and peers returned to civilian life. Serving in eight presidential administrations, Nitze commanded White House attention even when he was out of government, especially with his withering criticism of Jimmy Carter during Carter's presidency. While Nitze is perhaps best known for leading the formulation of NSC-68, which Harry Truman signed in 1950, Wilson contends that Nitze's most significant contribution to American peace and security came in the painstaking work done in the 1980s to negotiate successful treaties with the Soviets to reduce nuclear weapons while simultaneously deflecting skeptics surrounding Ronald Reagan. America's Cold Warrior connects Nitze's career and concerns about strategic vulnerability to the post-9/11 era and the challenges of the 2020s, where the United States finds itself locked in geopolitical competition with the People's Republic of China and Russia.
A growing body of readers is rediscovering Francis Graham Wilson's tremendous contribution to the study of politics and humane learning. In this volume he offers an extensive assessment of the nature of politics and the search for order in Spanish politics, concentrating on the central figures who defended the Church and communities during the Spanish Civil War. The book argues for the uniqueness of Spain among the other countries of Europe. For Wilson, the most salutary attribute of Spanish politics is found in the assemblage of smaller groupings of the citizenry within the larger society in communities; and it is in the smaller association that the most important aspects of moral, social and political life were nurtured. Part 1 includes assessments of three eminent Spanish traditionalists, Juan Donoso Cortes, Jaime Balmes, and Menendez Pelayo, as well as studies of central figures from the period of the Spanish Civil War Jose Antonio and Ramiro de Maeztu. The final chapters are taken from an unpublished book-length manuscript, ""An Anchor in the Latin Mind,"" that Wilson had completed at the time of his death in 1976, and was recently discovered by the editors. For Wilson, Latin thinkers possess advantages others do not a political realism that can be reinvigorated. The recovery of Spanish traditionalism, according to this book, is dependent upon a return to the self-understanding of the ordering principles of Spanish politics and society. Wilson's affirmation of a Spanish traditionalist inheritance during his lifetime encouraged a return to authentic popular rule and a greater appreciation of Spanish achievements in politics and the moral life.
Of Love and Other Maladies is Douglas Graham Wilson's first collection of poetry. A tender reflection of fluid sexuality and love, this poetry anthology captures sensual experiences, from instant attraction to heart ache and hopefulness. A touching exploration of romance that resonates, with the beauty of nature, to discover what it means to love.
Wilson measured up to his own exacting standards of what the conservative spirit should be. He shouldered a great responsibility with elan and moved beyond the defensive, reaching out boldly to blend the fading past and the emerging future into an imaginative present. With this rich sampling of Wilson's work, the editors have measured up to that standard as well."--Intercollegiate Review Francis Graham Wilson was a central figure in the revival of interest in political philosophy and American political thought in the mid-twentieth century. While he is best known as a Catholic writer and conservative theorist, his most significant contribution is his original interpretation of the development of American politics. Central to his thought was a process of self-interpretation by the citizenry, a quest for ultimate meaning turning to a divine, transcendent, basis of history and shared experience. Although Wilson's writings were extensive and influential, they have not been readily available for decades. Political Philosophy and Cultural Renewal brings together a coherent and representative selection of his work, highlighting his concern for the common good and his belief in personal and societal restraint as an alternative to political partisanship and superficiality. Wilson's affirmation of a republican inheritance encourages contemporary students of politics to revisit the Founders' views of diffused political authority. His remarkable contribution to American political philosophy is a full-fledged theory of cultural renewal that has lost none of its relevance for contemporary political and social issues. This volume will be of interest to historians, political scientists, and American studies specialists. H. Lee Cheek, Jr. is Chair of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Division and Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Brewton-Parker College in Mount Vernon, Georgia. His work has appeared in the Journal of Politics, International Social Science Review, and Methodist History. His other books include Calhoun and Popular Rule, Calhoun: Selected Writings and Speeches, and Political Philosophy and Cultural Renewal. M. Susan Power is Professor of Political Science at Arkansas State University. Her books include Before the Convention: Religion and the Founders and Jacques Maritain. Kathy B. Cheek is a choreographer and teacher of dance.
She loves a man who loves crocodiles. This huge predator is a source of pure terror. Inside the man she sees his spirit and the predator in equal shares. Now it seeks to possess her too. Could he have hurt others, is she next? She is a visitor, far from an English home. She must escape! She gets away. But it pulls her back. Now locked in a cage, this other being her only company. What can she do? She loved a man but a part of his soul belongs to a crocodile Love and terror - two parts shared. Had he hurt others, girls whose photos she finds? She knew she must escape. She fled from him but could not leave this spirit behind - now it possesses her too. It draws her to itself. She finds herself locked in a cage with only this demon for company. Where can she safely go? Susan is an English backpacker who goes on a holiday to outback Australia. She meets a charming man, is drawn into a passionate affair and travels with him into the remotest parts. But all is not as it seems. He has a fascination with crocodiles, they are his spirit totem ancestor. She realises he is dangerous and may have harmed others. Finally she escapes but the consequences follow her and the thing she thought she had left behind is trying to take over her mind. This box set contains the first two books of the 'Crocodile Spirit Dreaming Series', "Just Visiting' and "Creature of an Ancient Dreaming" Set in the outback of Australia it is an impossible love story, about blinding love and then loss and pain which follows when it is suddenly ripped away.
Like all crime and punishment, military detention in the Australian Army has a long and fraught history. Accommodating The King’s Hard Bargain tells the gritty story of military detention and punishment dating from colonial times with a focus on the system rather than the individual soldier. World War I was Australia’s first experience of a mass army and the detention experience was complex, encompassing short and long-term detention, from punishment in the field to incarceration in British and Australian military detention facilities. The World War II experience was similarly complex, with detention facilities in England, Palestine and Malaya, mainland Australia and New Guinea. Eventually the management of army detention would become the purview of an independent, specialist service. With the end of the war, the army reconsidered detention and, based on lessons learned, established a single ‘corrective establishment’, its emphasis on rehabilitation. As Accommodating The King’s Hard Bargain graphically illustrates, the road from colonial experience to today’s tri-service corrective establishment was long and rocky. Armies are powerful instruments, but also fragile entities, their capability resting on discipline. It is in pursuit of this war-winning intangible that detention facilities are considered necessary — a necessity that continues in the modern army.
Sophie vanished - where did she go? For 100 years nobody knows. A photo of 8 year old Sophie and an antique perfume bottle are found in the fireplace of an old house. The story of a Balmain family over 170 years. Finally they uncover what happened. Set around beautiful Sydney Harbour this is a story of this place and its people, an imagined history from early Australia to the present day. Who was Sophie and what happened to her? On buying an old weatherboard house in Balmain, Sydney, we discover her photo, dated 1900-1908, long hidden, along with a small perfume bottle in an old fireplace. Then we discover that Sophie disappeared with a childhood friend in 1908 and was never seem again, leaving a trail of sadness through generations of her family. This book tracks the journey of the discovery of Sophie and her family, from their first arrival in Sydney, over five generations of the family, until the mystery is finally laid to rest. It is a story of loss and grief, mixed with joy, which passes through the successive generations of a family. The way the family deals with unresolved tragedy and finally the the way their love transcends time is the story from which the real Sophie emerges. Graham Wilson, the author, lived in the house in Balmain around which this story is based for seven years, before moving to Millers Point. This is his first novel. Graham has previously written a family memoir, “Children of Arnhem’s Kaleidoscope” which describes his childhood, growing up in a aboriginal community in Western Arnhem Land. This is also available from this site.
It was hot. There was sudden stillness in the late afternoon air and the surface of the small waterhole shone with unnatural smoothness. Fresh pig tracks at water's edge suggested pigs just gone. Two bubbles popped to the surface near the edge of the pool; just decaying vegetation, said my mind. I should have smelt crocodile! A story of a missionary family in remote aboriginal Australia. What is it about the Northern Territory that fascinates? I have only to mention it’s name in conversation and people turn to listen. Why, for 180 years, has it drawn people from all over to come, stay longer than they imagined and, often, never leave? This book is a memoir of a family's life in a remote aboriginal community, in Australia's Northern Territory, something the equivalent of remote Canada or Alaska, where few people go. The place Oenpelli,(now Gunbalanya) is near Kadadu National Park, made famous in Crocodile Dundee. This story tells of changing world as a missionary family and an aboriginal community become part of modern Australia This our family's story, growing amongst the people, animals and places and colours of this this strange land, alongside an aboriginal community going through its own changes; citizenship, alcohol, uranium mining, land rights, outstation development, and community self management. It is a memoir of growing up in one of the most isolated parts of Australia - in a small aboriginal missionary community in the Northern Territory, something the equivalent of the remote Canada or Alaska. It is the landscape featured in the movie Crocodile Dundee. It tells of the huge change in this place in the last half century with the coming of land rights and aboriginal self determination. It also tells of my mother and fathers lives and Christian beliefs which motivated their contribution to this change. It is a story of my memories and love for this remote and beautiful place, in which I lived as a child then worked as an adult and of many NT characters who gave me the memories.It is also the story of me working as an adult across many parts of the NT and about the hardy, outlandish characters that inhabit this place. It also tells of my own experience of surviving attack by a large crocodile in a remote swamp It also provides a foundation for my novels in the Crocodile Spirit Dreaming Series. The places in these books are the places in which I lived and worked and many of the stories came little changed from people I knew. In particular my experience in surviving a crocodile attack of a large saltwater crocodile, which mauled my leg as told in this book forms part of the central role of the crocodile as a predator in this novel series. The role of my father in opening road transport including building a crossing of the East Alligator River, developing outstations for aboriginal communities, learning to fly on missionary wages and establishing an aviation service along with assisting the aboriginal peoples of this land to gain royalties from mining is a story that deserves to be told as a major part of NT history. Along with his tireless work the contribution of many others is also an essential part of the story.
Susan is on an idyllic holiday in Australia, The Barrier Reef is beautiful, Sydney and Melbourne wonderful. She wants to see the Outback. An Australian man offers to take her. She likes him. Yet now she is a captive. Her hands and feet are tied and her mouth is gagged. She is being taken to a river full of crocodiles and she is terrified. How could it have come to this?
A fisherman finds a unidentified head in a waterhole in Northern Australia. I seems to be the possession of a huge and ancient crocodile which lives there and does not want to let it go. The police are called to investigate and they too are awed by the crocodile which lives there. At the same time what first appeared to be a crocodile attack turns into murder. Who is this man who no one seems to
Six sigma is an effective and important management approach particularly used by multinational companies with manufacturing bases in the Asian and Pacific rim. One of the key issues facing businesses today is how to eliminate the high cost of developing new products. This is an area where the potential of six sigma has not been widely appreciated before. Six Sigma and the Product Development Cycle brings the six sigma approach up-to-date and explains it in a way that appeals to today’s management teams. It makes the concept of six sigma easy to understand and accessible with the statistics necessary for its implementation clearly explained. Six Sigma and the Product Development Cycle covers the integration of quality function deployment with Taguchi’s methods of experimental design and statistical process control. These tools gather detailed insights into customer needs, optimize the products or services to meet these needs at the lowest practical cost, and ensure that this performance is maintained. It is a book about both six sigma and product and service development. Through this approach an organization can gain greater flexibility, shorter timescales, and the ability to react more quickly to changes or new demands in the marketplace. The approach is illustrated with practical examples from the nuclear industry, motor manufacturing, inland mail, ‘emergency response’ organizations and financial services.
Dust, Donkeys and Delusion examines and clinically debunks the myth that has grown up around Private John Simpson Kirkpatrick, the so-called `Man with the Donkey', the quintessential Australian `hero' of Gallipoli. While the various elements of the Simpson myth have now become popularly accepted as `history', Dust, Donkeys and Delusion shows clearly, based on historical documents, both official and unofficial, that almost every word ever spoken or written about Simpson following his death is false.
A parents worst nightmare. A small child with an incurable disease and a father who served in Vietnam and blames himself for her illness. The family is torn apart. Finally only one choice remains to save the daughter's life, a Devil's Choice. The time is in the 1980s. Catherine, Lizzie's daughter has returned to Sydney to study. She now lives in Balmain, near where her mother grew up. She settles into life there, establishes a successful career and marries. Then she has a daughter who is the joy of both her and her husband's lives. But when her daughter is two years old the unimaginable happens. Her daughter develops an incurable disease, advanced leukaemia. Other treatments fail. Now the only option to save her daughters life is a bone marrow transplant. They search desperately for a donor to match. But no one is found. Her daughter has an unusual tissue profile that seems to come from her Catherine's own father. But who is her father? Catherine was conceived when her mother was raped by three men. Two of the three men who raped her mother are now in jail, destined to spend the most of their life there. The third is dead. Can Catherine bear to make the choice and bring herself to appeal to one of these men in an attempt to save her daughter's life when she knows that even this may be futile. This is the third novel in the "Old Balmain House" Series. Novel two, Lizzie's Tale, tells the story of Lizzie, a girl from Balmain, and her struggle to keep her own daughter when pregnant at only 15 and the terrible choices she must make. This book.continues the family's story into a third generation.
The Australian Imperial Force, first raised in 1914 for overseas war service, became better known by its initials - the "AIF". There was a distinct character to those who enlisted in the earliest months and who were destined to fight on Gallipoli. During the war the AIF took its place among the great armies of the world, on some of history's oldest battlefields. The Australians would attack at the Dardanelles, enter Jerusalem and Damascus, defend Amiens and Ypres, and swagger through the streets of Cairo, Paris, and London, with their distinctive slouch hats and comparative wealth of six shillings per day. However, the legend of the AIF is shrouded in myth and mystery. Was Beersheba the last great cavalry charge in history? Did the AIF storm the red light district of Cairo and burn it to ground while fighting running battles with the military police? Was the AIF the only all-volunteer army of World War I? Graham Wilson's Bully Beef and Balderdash shines an unforgiving light on these and other well-known myths of the AIF in World War I, arguing that these spectacular legends simply serve to diminish the hard-won reputation of the AIF as a fighting force. Graham Wilson mounts his own campaign to rehabilitate the historical reputation of the force and to demonstrate that misleading and inaccurate embellishment does nothing but hide the true story of Australia's World War I fighting army. Bully Beef and Balderdash deliberately tilts at some well-loved windmills and, for those who cherish the mythical story of the AIF, this will not be comfortable reading. Yet, given the extraordinary truth of the AIF's history, it is certainly compelling reading.
The late Graham Wilson delighted in his self-appointed role as the AIF’s myth buster. In this, his second and final volume of Bully Beef and Balderdash, he tackles another eight popularly accepted myths, exposing the ‘Water Wizard’ of Gallipoli who saved an army, dismissing the old adage that the ‘lions of the AIF’ were led by British ‘donkeys’, debunking the Gallipoli legends of the lost sword of Eureka and ‘Abdul the Terrible’, the Sultan’s champion marksman sent to dispose of AIF sniper Billy Sing, and unravelling a series of other long-standing fictions. Finally, he turns his formidable forensic mind to the ‘lost’ seven minutes at The Nek, the early cessation of the artillery barrage which led to the slaughter of the Light Horsemen immortalised in Peter Weir’s Gallipoli. Wilson’s crusade to debunk such celebrated fictions was born of the conviction that these myths do very real damage to the history of the AIF. To demythologise this nation’s Great War military history, he argues, is to encourage Australians to view the AIF’s record on its own merits. Such are these merits that they do not require any form of embellishment to shine for all time. This book is a tribute to Graham Wilson’s extraordinary passion for truth and fact and his drive to set the historical record straight.
The girl you love vanishes - you search and search. No trace of her is found. You find one who looks just like her - her eyes see you but they do not know you, no recognition flickers - is it a mirage, dream or desperate hope? She likes you. You ask and she comes with you. Her mind sees sunlight. You see dark shadowed edges. Can you remake your life with a person who holds no memory of you. An unknown girl appears on an aboriginal community in far north Queensland. She has no memory of any life before, no one knows her. Who is she? Where has she come from? She looks like a missing backpacker, Susan, she sounds like Susan, but her name is Jane. Her past life is an unknown place from where she knows no one. Now she has to try to make a new life without any connections to her past. This is the final book of the Crocodile Spirit Dreaming Series. It tells the story of an English backpacker who went traveling in Outback Australia with a man who loved crocodiles, and how her life turned into a horror nightmare. Finally she gets her freedom only to disappear. Susan was on trial for murder when she vanished. She had been just released on bail, despite pleading guilty, when new evidence indicating self-defense was found. She was also pregnant and expecting twins. Since she has gone only a pair of shoes she was wearing have been found. They were next to a waterhole full of crocodiles. It is feared that she and her unborn children are dead, taken by crocodiles. More than a year passes without any other trace of her. An inquest has made an open finding on her disappearance. What is the link between Susan and this girl Jane who turns up out of nowhere, knowing no one, remembering nothing? Can this girl, Jane, build a new and happy life with just her two small children. Can a tragedy of the past ever be overcome? This is the story of the remaking of a new life from the broken shell of the old - how memories of the old threaten to tear apart the new. And always, at the dark edge, lurks an ancient creature of the deep, a being whose lineage is the long lost Australian dreamtime, before the spirits made this land. Yet from this dark can come a new place, a place where sunlit shadows dance.
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