Is the science of moral cognition usefully modelled on aspects of Universal Grammar? Are human beings born with an innate 'moral grammar' that causes them to analyse human action in terms of its moral structure, with just as little awareness as they analyse human speech in terms of its grammatical structure? Questions like these have been at the forefront of moral psychology ever since John Mikhail revived them in his influential work on the linguistic analogy and its implications for jurisprudence and moral theory. In this seminal book, Mikhail offers a careful and sustained analysis of the moral grammar hypothesis, showing how some of John Rawls' original ideas about the linguistic analogy, together with famous thought experiments like the trolley problem, can be used to improve our understanding of moral and legal judgement.
In The 100 Greatest Swimmers in History, John Lohn profiles some of the biggest names the sport has ever seen, from Mark Spitz and Tracy Caulkins to Katie Ledecky and Michael Phelps. Each swimmer is ranked based on achievements such as Olympic medals, world and European championships, and world records. Lohn provides insight into how these swimmers became the best in their sport by detailing their accomplishments, finest performances, records, and noteworthy biographical information. This new, updated edition contains results from the two most recent World Championships and the 2016 Olympic Games, and while many athletes further cemented their top-100 status, some newcomers also made their way into the rankings—including Katie Ledecky, who launched herself high up the list with her dominating performances. The 100 Greatest Swimmers in History also features a new section highlighting the top coaches in the sport and includes multiple appendixes that serve as wonderful references for information such as world and Olympic medal counts of the profiled swimmers. Fans, coaches, athletes, and sport historians alike will find this an indispensable resource.
Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times: "Those hungry for political news will read Double Down for the scooplets and insidery glimpses it serves up about the two campaigns, and the clues it offers about the positioning already going on among Republicans and Democrats for 2016 ... The book testifies to its authors’ energetic legwork and insider access... creating a novelistic narrative that provides a you-are-there immediacy... They succeed in taking readers interested in the backstabbing and backstage maneuvering of the 2012 campaign behind the curtains, providing a tactile... sense of what it looked like from the inside." In their runaway bestseller Game Change, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann captured the full drama of Barack Obama’s improbable, dazzling victory over the Clintons, John McCain, and Sarah Palin. With the same masterly reporting, unparalleled access, and narrative skill, Double Down picks up the story in the Oval Office, where the president is beset by crises both inherited and unforeseen—facing defiance from his political foes, disenchantment from the voters, disdain from the nation’s powerful money machers, and dysfunction within the West Wing. As 2012 looms, leaders of the Republican Party, salivating over Obama’s political fragility, see a chance to wrest back control of the White House—and the country. So how did the Republicans screw it up? How did Obama survive the onslaught of super PACs and defy the predictions of a one-term presidency? Double Down follows the gaudy carnival of GOP contenders—ambitious and flawed, famous and infamous, charismatic and cartoonish—as Mitt Romney, the straitlaced, can-do, gaffe-prone multimillionaire from Massachusetts, scraped and scratched his way to the nomination. Double Down exposes blunders, scuffles, and machinations far beyond the klieg lights of the campaign trail: Obama storming out of a White House meeting with his high command after accusing them of betrayal. Romney’s mind-set as he made his controversial “47 percent” comments. The real reasons New Jersey governor Chris Christie was never going to be Mitt’s running mate. The intervention held by the president’s staff to rescue their boss from political self-destruction. The way the tense détente between Obama and Bill Clinton morphed into political gold. And the answer to one of the campaign’s great mysteries—how did Clint Eastwood end up performing Dada dinner theater at the Republican convention? In Double Down, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann take the reader into back rooms and closed-door meetings, laying bare the secret history of the 2012 campaign for a panoramic account of an election that was as hard fought as it was lastingly consequential.
The fruit of an effervescent love between an American actress and a Greek musician who abandoned him into the arms of his American grandmother, Joe Landis is unable to settle down because of his wide oscillations between resenting and forgiving his parents. A freethinking seeker of the extraordinary, he longs for a woman with a gorgeous soprano, an hourglass body, and a golden heart. Instead, he receives an invitation from a Zen-Christian astronomer-monk to help Greek orphans, in exchange for sublime gifts. Two trips to Greece ensue—the first a descent into crime, the second a chance for redemption.
Now a two-time Academy Award winner for best director, twice winner of the Directors Guild of America Award for best director, and recipient of countless other critics prizes and nominations in multiple capacities, Clint Eastwood stands alongside Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg as one of the finest directors working in modern cinema. Here, John Foote examines the long, impressive, and unlikely film career of a man who fought against expectations to forge his own way and become one of this generation's finest filmmakers. Each chapter examines a different film, beginning with Play Misty for Me (1971) and High Plains Drifter (1973) and extending to his 21st-century films Space Cowboys (2000), Blood Work (2002), Mystic River (2003), Million Dollar Baby (2004), Flags of Our Fathers (2006), Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), and Changeling (2008). This book is, in the author's own words, a study of how Eastwood managed to quietly get to this level—and a celebration of his gifts as an artist. Eastwood has evolved not only as a director, but also as an actor, a screenwriter, a producer, and a score composer, to become one of the most revered figures in Hollywood. Perhaps it is because he started out in Hollywood with such little influence on the final product that he now demonstrates such a strong desire to collaborate with others and provide help wherever he can. In addition to casting off his reputation as a hack and accumulating two Oscar nominations for Best Actor over the past 15 years, he has guided other actors to no less than three Academy Award wins. The executives love him because he has made them money over the years—occasionally even making one for them in exchange for financial backing on other projects. Critics love him because of the care he takes in creating his films. Audiences love him because he has never lost his sense of entertainment, even as his artistry has matured.
(Screen World). Movie fans eagerly await each year's new edition of Screen World , the definitive record of the cinema since 1949. Volume 55 provides an illustrated listing of every American and foreign film released in the United States in 2003, all documented with more than 1,000 photographs. The 2004 edition of Screen World features such notable films as Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King , which won all 11 Academy Awards it was nominated for, including Best Picture, tying a record; Clint Eastwood's Mystic River , which won Academy Awards for Best Actor Sean Penn and Best Supporting Actor Tim Robbins; Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation , Academy Award-winner for Best Original Screenplay; and Peter Weir's Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World . Also featured are Patty Jenkins' Monster , featuring Academy Award-winner for Best Actress Charlize Theron, and independent successes such as Gurinder Chadha's Bend It like Beckham and Tom McCarthy's The Station Agent . As always, Screen World 's outstanding features include: photographic stills and shots of the four Academy Award-winning actors as well as all acting nominees; a look at the year's most promising new screen personalities; complete filmographies cast and characters, credits, production company, date released, rating and running time; and biographical entries a priceless reference for over 2,400 living stars, including real name, school, and date and place of birth. Now featuring 16 pages of color photos!
By 1977 National Public Radio (NPR) was in trouble, plagued by too little funding and small audiences. The phenomenal success of its adaptation of Star Wars as a radio drama in 1981 gave NPR the needed ratings, publicity, and boost in donations that kept it afloat at exactly the time it was threatened the most. Most importantly, Star Wars brought a new audience to NPR. As it did in theaters, where George Lucas's films redefined movie making, so too did NPR's Star Wars forever change the artistic world of radio drama. That a radio network, dependent exclusively on audio, would find a lifeline in one of the most visually dynamic movies ever released is the stuff of irony. Utilizing new interviews with creatives such as Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), Ann Sachs (Princess Leia), Perry King (Han Solo), and director John Madden, and archival research, this book details how an unlikely alliance of academics, radio executives, Lucasfilm employees, actors, and behind-the-scenes artists banded together, despite the obstacles, to create a unique and consequential work. It is also the story of how writer Brian Daley was the fulcrum who made it all possible.
John Lemos' Freedom, Responsibility, and Determinism offers an up-to-date introduction to free will (and associated) debates in an engaging, dialogic format that recommends it for use by beginning students in philosophy as well as by undergraduates in intermediate courses in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and action theory.
With over 5,200 entries, this volume remains one of the most extensive annotated bibliographies on the USA’s fight against Japan in the Second World War. Including books, articles, and de-classified documents up to the end of 1987, the book is organized into six categories: Part 1 presents reference works, including encyclopedias, pictorial accounts, military histories, East Asian histories, hisotoriographies. Part 2 covers diplomatic-political aspects of the war against Japan. Part 3 contains sources on the economic and legal aspects of the war against Japan. Part 4 presents sources on the military apsects of the war – embracing land, air and sea forces. Religious aspects of the war are covered in Part 5 and Part 6 deals with the social and cultural aspects, including substantial sections on the treatment of Japanese minorities in the USA, Hawaii, Canada and Peru.
A novel on the legality of love from the author of City of Night, “one of the few original American writers of the last century” (Gore Vidal, public intellectual and author of I Told You So). A man confronts the twin nightmares of death and silent injustice in John Rechy’s third novel. While juggling the care of his ailing mother, a young law student stands trial in Los Angeles on a charge that exposes him to the depths and intricacies of society’s twisted conceptions of justice and privacy. In This Day’s Death, “[Rechy] deals with experience from the inside, and it’s possible he offers us more unevaluated and uncodified homosexual feeling than any writer in the United States today” (The New York Times). Praise for John Rechy “Rechy shows great comic and tragic talent. He is truly a gifted novelist.” —Christopher Isherwood, author and playwright “His tone rings absolutely true, is absolutely his own, and he has the kind of discipline which allows him a rare and beautiful recklessness. He tells the truth, and tells it with such passion that we are forced to share in the life he conveys. This is a most humbling and liberating achievement.” —James Baldwin, novelist, playwright, and activist “His uncompromising honesty as a gay writer has provoked as much fear as admiration . . . John Rechy doesn’t fit into categories. He transcends them. His individual vision is unique, perfect, loving and strong.” —Carolyn See, author of Dreaming: Hard Luck and Good Times in America
A riveting account of the deadly Thirtymile fire and the controversy and recriminations that raged in its aftermath, from our premier chronicler of wildfires and those who fight them The Thirtymile fire in the remote North Cascade range near the Canadian border in Washington began as a simple mop-up operation. In a few hours, a series of catastrophic errors led to the entrapment and deaths of four members of the fire crew—two teen-age girls and two young men. Each had brought order and meaning to their lives by joining the fire world. Then the very flames they pursued turned on them, extinguishing their lives. When the victims were blamed for their own deaths, the charge brought a storm of controversy that undermined the firefighting community. Continuing a tradition established in his previous books, and by his father Norman's Young Men and Fire, John N. Maclean serves as an unflinching guide to the rogue fire's unexpected violence—which is almost matched by the passions released by the official verdict of the blaze. Weaving together the astonishing stories told by the witnesses, the victims' family members, and the official reports, Maclean produces a dramatic narrative of a catastrophe that has changed the way fire is fought. More than anything, it is a story of humanity at risk when wildfire, ancient and unpredictable, breaks loose
Winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize by the Harvard Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy Manipulating the Masses tells the story of the enduring threat to American democracy that arose out of World War I: the establishment of pervasive, systematic propaganda as an instrument of the state. During the Great War, the federal government exercised unprecedented power to shape the views and attitudes of American citizens. Its agent for this was the Committee on Public Information (CPI), established by President Woodrow Wilson one week after the United States entered the war in April 1917. Driven by its fiery chief, George Creel, the CPI reached every crevice of the nation, every day, and extended widely abroad. It established the first national newspaper, made prepackaged news a quotidian aspect of governing, and pioneered the concept of public diplomacy. It spread the Wilson administration’s messages through articles, cartoons, books, and advertisements in newspapers and magazines; through feature films and volunteer Four Minute Men who spoke during intermission; through posters plastered on buildings and along highways; and through pamphlets distributed by the millions. It enlisted the nation’s leading progressive journalists, advertising executives, and artists. It harnessed American universities and their professors to create propaganda and add legitimacy to its mission. Even as Creel insisted that the CPI was a conduit for reliable, fact-based information, the office regularly sanitized news, distorted facts, and played on emotions. Creel extolled transparency but established front organizations. Overseas, the CPI secretly subsidized news organs and bribed journalists. At home, it challenged the loyalty of those who occasionally questioned its tactics. Working closely with federal intelligence agencies eager to sniff out subversives and stifle dissent, the CPI was an accomplice to the Wilson administration’s trampling of civil liberties. Until now, the full story of the CPI has never been told. John Maxwell Hamilton consulted over 150 archival collections in the United States and Europe to write this revealing history, which shows the shortcuts to open, honest debate that even well-meaning propagandists take to bend others to their views. Every element of contemporary government propaganda has antecedents in the CPI. It is the ideal vehicle for understanding the rise of propaganda, its methods of operation, and the threat it poses to democracy.
In the mid-1930s the Mexican government expropriated millions of acres of land from hundreds of U.S. property owners as part of President Lázaro Cárdenas’s land redistribution program. Because no compensation was provided to the Americans a serious crisis, which John J. Dwyer terms “the agrarian dispute,” ensued between the two countries. Dwyer’s nuanced analysis of this conflict at the local, regional, national, and international levels combines social, economic, political, and cultural history. He argues that the agrarian dispute inaugurated a new and improved era in bilateral relations because Mexican officials were able to negotiate a favorable settlement, and the United States, constrained economically and politically by the Great Depression, reacted to the crisis with unaccustomed restraint. Dwyer challenges prevailing arguments that Mexico’s nationalization of the oil industry in 1938 was the first test of Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy by showing that the earlier conflict over land was the watershed event. Dwyer weaves together elite and subaltern history and highlights the intricate relationship between domestic and international affairs. Through detailed studies of land redistribution in Baja California and Sonora, he demonstrates that peasant agency influenced the local application of Cárdenas’s agrarian reform program, his regional state-building projects, and his relations with the United States. Dwyer draws on a broad array of official, popular, and corporate sources to illuminate the motives of those who contributed to the agrarian dispute, including landless fieldworkers, indigenous groups, small landowners, multinational corporations, labor leaders, state-level officials, federal policymakers, and diplomats. Taking all of them into account, Dwyer explores the circumstances that spurred agrarista mobilization, the rationale behind Cárdenas’s rural policies, the Roosevelt administration’s reaction to the loss of American-owned land, and the diplomatic tactics employed by Mexican officials to resolve the international conflict.
Register of the Certificates Issued by John Pierce, Esquire, Paymaster General and Commissioner of Army Accounts for the United States, to Officers and Soldiers of the Continental Army Under Act of July 4, 1783
Register of the Certificates Issued by John Pierce, Esquire, Paymaster General and Commissioner of Army Accounts for the United States, to Officers and Soldiers of the Continental Army Under Act of July 4, 1783
In 1869 the State of Indiana founded Purdue University as Indiana’s land-grant university dedicated to agriculture and engineering. Today, Purdue stands as one of the elite research and education institutions in the world. Its halls have been home to Nobel Prize- and World Food Prize-winning faculty, record-setting astronauts, laureled humanists, researchers, and leaders of industry. Its thirteen colleges and schools span the sciences, liberal arts, management, and veterinary medicine, boasting more than 450,000 living alumni. Ever True: 150 Years of Giant Leaps at Purdue University by John Norberg captures the essence of this great university. In this volume, Norberg takes readers beyond the iconic redbrick walls of Purdue University’s West Lafayette campus to delve into the stories of the faculty, alumni, and leaders who make up this remarkable institution’s distinguished history. Written to commemorate Purdue University’s sesquicentennial celebrations, Ever True picks up where prior histories leave off, bringing the intricacies of historic tales to the forefront, updating the Purdue story to the present, and looking to the future.
Focused on rivalry and legacy, The Gift of Friendship examines the bitter relationship between two writers revealed after one of them dies. It was first broadcast on ITV in September 1974.
Following the passage of the Confederate Ordinance of Secession in April 1861, pro-Union Virginians met in Wheeling and began the process that would lead to the formation of West Virginia as a separate state. Despite the new state's allegiance to the North, the population of West Virginia remained divided in its loyalties, as author John W. Shaffer has described in his other book, "Barbour County, A Clash of Loyalties: A Border County in the Civil War." In his latest effort, "Union and Confederate Soldiers and Sympathizers," Mr. Shaffer enumerates over 1,000 individuals who comprised the fractious community of Barbour County. Using official military records, the 1860 U.S. federal census, and a variety of other primary and secondary sources, the author lists 718 Union and 528 Confederate soldiers and sympathizers from Barbour County. These individuals are arranged by army and thereunder alphabetically. For each we learn the military unit (except for sympathizers), dates of service, duties, date of birth, names of parents, postwar occupation and other activities, and date of death. Mr. Shaffer's Introduction describes the background of the Civil War in Barbour County, while the Appendices specify the Union and Confederate units and military engagements in which Barbour citizens fought.
One hundred and fifty years of advancing technology has done much to promote the success of the human race...or has it? This fast-paced technological thriller may have some clues. Fast forward a century and a half to the platinum age of medicine and an Earth pursuing a large-scale colonization effort on Mars. While the pacemaker may have been one of the first devices implanted in a person, it surely will not be the last. The ever-shrinking integrated circuit will most certainly find its way into our systems. Stem-cell research, in its infancy now, will likely progress into a beneficial method of the prevention and treatment of disease. Like their predecessors, Cancer, AIDS, Ebola and the like will surely be wiped out. Detox is a taught thriller, with mystery, suspense, loads of action, and a dash of romance. Mans inhumanity to man takes center stage in a quest for truth, justice, and retribution. And with the worlds largest corporations, Dual-Planet and Molentel, and the deadly Plasma Virus intertwined in a massive colonization effort on the Red Planet, maybe the bottom line needs to be taken into account.
How southern members of Congress remade the United States in their own image after the Civil War No question has loomed larger in the American experience than the role of the South. Southern Nation examines how southern members of Congress shaped national public policy and American institutions from Reconstruction to the New Deal—and along the way remade the region and the nation in their own image. The central paradox of southern politics was how such a highly diverse region could be transformed into a coherent and unified bloc—a veritable nation within a nation that exercised extraordinary influence in politics. This book shows how this unlikely transformation occurred in Congress, the institutional site where the South's representatives forged a new relationship with the rest of the nation. Drawing on an innovative theory of southern lawmaking, in-depth analyses of key historical sources, and congressional data, Southern Nation traces how southern legislators confronted the dilemma of needing federal investment while opposing interference with the South's racial hierarchy, a problem they navigated with mixed results before choosing to prioritize white supremacy above all else. Southern Nation reveals how southern members of Congress gradually won for themselves an unparalleled role in policymaking, and left all southerners—whites and blacks—disadvantaged to this day. At first, the successful defense of the South's capacity to govern race relations left southern political leaders locally empowered but marginalized nationally. With changing rules in Congress, however, southern representatives soon became strategically positioned to profoundly influence national affairs.
Environmental Chemicals Desk Reference is a concise version of the widely read Agrochemicals Desk Reference and Groundwater Chemicals Desk Reference. This up-to-date volume was inspired by the need for a combination of the material in both references, together with the large number of research publications and the continued interest in the fate, transport, and remediation of hazardous substances. Much new data has been added to this unique edition, including global legislation (REACH) and sustainability, thereby reflecting the wealth of literature in the field. Featured are environmental and physical/chemical data on more than 200 compounds, including pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides.
The Wildcats are in trouble again! Down on the ground, there?s got to be some way of raising funds, and their coach comes up with health food bars. Only trouble is they?re inedible, and whoever sells the most gets an all-expenses-paid trip to Canberra. Up in the air, though, Splinters and Nuke are on their way to London to retrieve their best player, Gazza, who?s been deported back to England with her mum, and the two boys get up to the sort of in-flight antics that have made travelling footballers notorious. Grappling as always with the problem of how to make up the numbers, someone remembers a genius footballer called Armitage Shanks who registered for the Under 6s, but never turned up for training or played a single game. Then the obvious question: how do you know he was a genius? And (to Splinters) the equally obvious answer: he had great boots! But when Armitage Shanks turns up, it?s a bigger surprise than the Wildcats have bargained for. A crazy adventure with an unexpectedly moving conclusion, this is one of John Larkin?s funniest books in the series - but it also offers a little insight into success and fame.
Before the Civil Rights movement, southern liberal journalists played a crucial role in shaping southern thought on race and racism. John Kneebone presents a richly detailed intellectual history of southern racial liberalism between World War I and World War II by examining the works of five leading southern journalists -- Gerald W. Johnson, Baltimore Evening Sun; George Fort Milton, Chattanooga News; Virginius Dabney, Richmond Times-Dispatch; Hodding Carter, Greenville (Miss.) Delta Democrat-Times; and Ralph McGill, Atlanta Constitution. The South's leading liberal journalists came from varied backgrounds and lived in different regions of the South, but all had one characteristic in common: as public advocates of southern liberalism, each spoke as a southerner with deep roots in the southern past. Yet their editorials were not intended solely for local audiences; they wrote essays for national and regional journals of opinion as well, and each of these men published important books on the South and its history. Through their writings, they gained reputations throughout the country as articulate spokesmen for southern liberalism. Their essays, editorials, books, and letters provide rich and abundant sources for studying the changing patterns of southern liberal thought in the critical years from the 1920s to the 1940s. Moreover, these journalists were members of southern liberal organizations -- Will W. Alexander's Commission on Interracial Cooperation, the Southern Commission on the Study of Lynching, the Southern Policy Committee, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, and the Southern Regional Council -- and so they helped devise the reform programs that they in turn publicized. While they believed that social and economic change in the modern South required reform of race relations, the journalists felt that these reforms could be accommodated within the framework of racial segregation. The protests of blacks against segregation during World War II challenged that way of thinking and created a crisis for southern liberals. Kneebone analyzes this crisis and the disconnection between the southern liberalism of the 1920s and 1930s and the Civil Rights movement. Originally published in 1985. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.
In the days following the Battle of Birch Coulie, the decisive battle in the deadly Dakota War of 1862, one of President Lincoln?s private secretaries wrote: ?There has hardly been an outbreak so treacherous, so sudden, so bitter, and so bloody, as that which filled the State of Minnesota with sorrow and lamentation.? Even today, at the 150th anniversary of the Dakota War, the battle still raises questions and stirs controversy. In Birch Coulie John Christgau recounts the dramatic events surrounding the battle. American history at its narrative best, his book is also a uniquely balanced and accurate chronicle of this little-understood conflict, one of the most important to roil the American West. Christgau?s account of the war between white settlers and the Dakota Indians in Minnesota examines two communities torn by internal dissent and external threat, whites and Native Americans equally traumatized by the short and violent war. The book also delves into the aftermath, during which thirty-eight Dakota men were hanged without legal representation or the appearance of defense witnesses, the largest mass execution in American history. With its unusually nuanced perspective, Birch Coulie brings a welcome measure of clarity and insight to a critical moment in the troubled history of the American West.
Portrait of America describes our nationÕs changing population and examines through a demographic lens some of our most pressing contemporary challenges, ranging from poverty and economic inequality to racial tensions and health disparities. Celebrated authorJohn Iceland covers various topics, including America's historical demographic growth; the American family today; gender inequality; economic well-being; immigration and diversity; racial and ethnic inequality; internal migration and residential segregation; and health and mortality. The discussion of these topics is informed by several sources, including an examination of household survey data, and by syntheses of existing published material, both quantitative and qualitative. Iceland discusses the current issues and controversies around these themes, highlighting their role in everyday debates taking place in Congress, the media, and in American living rooms. Each chapter includes historical background, as well as a discussion of how patterns and trends in the United States compare to those in peer countries.
In the early hours of 14 June 2017, a fire engulfed the 24-storey Grenfell Tower in west London, killing at least 72 people and injuring many more. An entire community was destroyed. For many people affected by this tragedy, the psychological scars may never heal. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a condition that affects many people who have endured traumatic events, leaving them unable to move on from life-changing tragedies. In the immediate aftermath of the fire, the focus was rightly placed on providing food, shelter and health care for those left homeless – but it is important that we don’t lose sight of the psychological impact this fire will have had on its survivors. 24 Stories is an anthology of short stories, written on themes of community and hope, by a mix of the UK’s best established writers and previously unpublished authors, whose pieces were chosen by Kathy Burke from over 250 entries. Contributors include: Irvine Welsh, A. L. Kennedy, Meera Syal, John Niven, Pauline Melville, Daisy Buchanan, Christopher Brookmyre, Zoe Venditozzi, Nina Stibbe, Mike Gayle, Murray Lachlan Young, Barney Farmer.
The General Board of the Navy, in existence from 1900 to 1950, was a uniquely American and unparalleled strategic planning organization. As John T. Kuehn shows, this was the United States' first modern general staff in peacetime, as well as the nexus for naval thought and strategic thinking. The Board's creation reflected the reformist spirit of the era that also gave birth to the Army War College, the Army General Staff, and the Chief of Naval Operations. As such, the General Board and its mission also reflected an attempt to reconcile the primacy of civilian control of the military with an increasing need for more formal military and naval planning establishments, processes, and methods. Thus the General Board's very name reflected the idea shared by both corporate America and naval tradition that challenges and problems could be met with special, temporary organizational bodies. By the 1920s the General Board had become a permanent feature of the Navy and was regarded as the premier strategic "think tank" for advice to the Secretary of the Navy. Evolving over the course of its existence, the Board developed into a bona fide institutional component atop the service's hierarchy. Kuehn highlights how this small body, wielding immense influence over the span of its organizational life, was an innovative, progressive, and productive force for the security of the United States in peace and for naval success in war. The service of the men comprising the Board is little known, but their collaborative ethos should serve as a model for their modern counterparts. Kuehn's organizational history of the General Board provides context on the complexities and turbulence involved in building the modern Navy that transitioned over time from coal and sail to nuclear-powered warships. America's First General Staff offers the first single-volume history of the General Board of the Navy, as well as an analysis of the U.S. Navy during periods of great change in both peace and war.
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