This book is the story of my flying experiences during World War II. It covers primarily the period from February 1943 to April 1945. At the beginning I explain why and how I got into the Army Air Corps, as it was then called, and at the end I include an account of my partial convalescence in a U.S. Army hospital in England. Otherwise, I stick closely to my actual flying experiences and the events of that era. I omit all but a trivial amount of personal experiences outside of flying. I have compiled this account from several sources: (1) my memory and my official flight record; (2) the letters I wrote to my immediate family while I was in the Air Corps, which I repossessed after my parents died; (3) official Eighth Air Force records of bombing missions; (4) accounts written by former crew members, Larry Locker, John R. Wingfield, and Fred Stoker; and (5) the book, The 388th at War, by Edward Huntzinger. During the war, I had a diary in which I kept brief accounts of day-to-day events. However, some eager lackey, who must have known that diaries were officially forbidden, removed it from my belongings in March 1945 when he transferred them from my bomber unit to the Army hospital where I was convalescing. Fortunately, I could verify the dates and events that I include in this account by means of these other sources. Long ago, I determined to write this chronicle if I survived my combat tour. I felt that it would be the least I could do for those who will never grow old and can never speak for themselves. I do not pretend to speak for them. Nevertheless, if my account is only one among many that bears witness to the trauma and agony of politically organized human conflict, it will have served its purpose. The title I have chosen derives from the common thought many of us have when we are suddenly enveloped in Big Events, such as, for example, World War II. "Boy, if they could see me now," we think, as we imagine all the people--family, friends, and "enemies"--who might gasp in awe and admiration at our exploits. But . . .They Never Saw Me Then. Since "they" did not see me then, I decided to tell this story myself. I was a young man--a boy, really, 21-22 years old--during 1943 and 1944. I was one among millions of young men fighting millions of other young men, all of whom might have been friends if not for the circumstances of time and place in which they happened to live. All my fellow airmen and I knew that Hitler and his henchmen were atrocious and loathsome examples of the human race. Yet, any U.S. soldier or airman, who thought even briefly about his job of trying to kill and destroy "the enemy," knew that he was not within range of damaging Hitler and other Nazi leaders. We could not reach their personal environments or influence their decisions; our activities were many magnitudes removed from hurting them. We could only chip away at the peripheries of their domain and hope that our efforts would destroy their capability to continue. To do so, we had to try and kill our enemy counterparts with whom we had no personal quarrel at all. We aimed our bombs at their strategic war-making industries and infrastructure, but in the process we knew we could not avoid hitting churches, schools, and innocent people. Many of us thought that a better way must exist. Fifty-six years later, I still think so. The first section of this book describes my experiences as an aviation cadet. I began flying in August 1943, and advanced through the three phases of the Air Corps flight instruction program--Primary, Basic, and Advanced. I received my silver Pilot Wings in February 1944, which meant I was in the pilot class of 44-B. Air Corps orders then assigned me to the role of copilot on a B-17. I was placed on a crew for operational training at Drew Field near Tampa, Florida. Upon completion of that training, my crew and I were shipped to Sco
American higher education is increasingly in trouble. Universities are facing an uncertain and unsettling future with free speech suppression, out-of-control Federal student aid programs, soaring administrative costs, and intercollegiate athletics mired in corruption. Restoring the Promise explores these issues and exposes the federal government's role in contributing to them. With up-to-date discussions of the most recent developments on university campuses, this book is the most comprehensive assessment of universities in recent years.
Growing concern about inequality has led to proposals to remake American society according to ill-conceived and coercive "egalitarian" values that are fundamentally unfair. This unique book reveals the modern romance with equality as a destructive flirtation. The elites who advocate such notions claim they champion the poor—but more often than not the nostrums of this managerial class undermine, rather than advance, mass prosperity and human well-being. The authors of In All Fairness challenge all of the prevailing egalitarian ideas, including the claim that the country is riven by inequality in the first place. After all, our economy thrives with a division of labor that allows individuals who are unequal in interests and talents to pursue their own unique goals. Looked at in this way, equality is far more widespread than overheated rhetoric might lead one to expect—as factual data show. But it is an equality of a particularly valuable type—one arrived at, not by top-down attempts to impose economic uniformity, but by our respecting inviolable rules of fair play and the dignity of each person, a dignity that requires everyone to respect the voluntary transactions of others. This approach holds equity, liberty, diversity, and prosperity together. Would we want it any other way in America and anywhere around the world? The authors draw on economics, philosophy, religion, law, political science, and history to provide answers to a perennial question that especially agitates the American public today: Can the coercive powers of the state be used to achieve a kind of arithmetic equality? The authors, each in their own way, make a strong case that they should not be used in this fashion. Love inequality or loathe it, In All Fairness is full of key insights about the connections among fairness, liberty, equality and the quest for human dignity. You won't think about wealth and poverty, equality and inequality, in the same way ever again.
Despite the political potency of money and banking issues, historians have largely dismissed the Progressive Era political debate over banking as irrelevant and have been preoccupied with explaining the shortcomings, limitations and inadequacies of the Federal Reserve Act. The picture that has emerged is one of bankers controlling the course of financial reform with the assistance of political leaders who were either subservient, hopelessly naive or insincere in their public opposition to bankers. This book places their exertions in a larger, unfolding political context and traces in an analytical narrative the interplay of sectional and economic interests, political ideologies and partisan clashes that shaped the course of banking reform.
This book describes the impact of the American Civil War on the development of central state authority in the late nineteenth century. The author contends that intense competition for control of the national political economy between the free North and slave South produced secession, which in turn spawned the formation of two new states, a market-oriented northern Union and a southern Confederacy in which government controls on the economy were much more important. During the Civil War, the American state both expanded and became the agent of northern economic development. After the war ended, however, tension within the Republican coalition led to the abandonment of Reconstruction and to the return of former Confederates to political power throughout the South. As a result, American state expansion ground to a halt during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book makes a major contribution to the understanding of the causes and consequences of the Civil War and the legacy of the war in the twentieth century.
In Money Matters, Richard Gray investigates the discourses of aesthetics and philosophy alongside economic thought, arguing that their domains are not mutually exclusive. The transition in Germany from an agrarian or proto-industrial economy to a capitalist industrial economy, which was paralleled by a shift from the exchange of money in coin to the use of paper currencies, occurred simultaneously with an efflorescence of German-language literature and philosophy. Based on close readings of canonical literary and philosophical texts, Gray explores how this confluence led to a rich cross-fertilization between economic and literary thought in Germany during this period. Money Matters documents the surprising degree to which literature and philosophy participated in the creation of modern economic paradigms, as well as the extent to which economics influenced literature and philosophy. The cultural artifacts of the period demonstrate the existence of an “economic unconsciousness”: persistent notions of value and exchange that inflect the aesthetic and thematic dimensions of literary and philosophical texts. This book offers a thought-provoking and original analysis of literature and ideas in the critical transition period from Kant and Goethe, through the German Romantics, to Marx.
And Bank-America, caught short with bad loans and a deep recession in the early eighties, nearly failed before Sam Armacost and then Tom Clausen achieved an amazing turnaround in the mid-1980s.
In this extensive history of U.S. monetary policy, Richard H. Timberlake chronicles the intellectual, political, and economic developments that prompted the use of central banking institutions to regulate the monetary systems. After describing the constitutional principles that the Founding Fathers laid down to prevent state and federal governments from printing money. Timberlake shows how the First and Second Banks of the United States gradually assumed the central banking powers that were originally denied them. Drawing on congressional debates, government documents, and other primary sources, he analyses the origins and constitutionality of the greenbacks and examines the evolution of clearinghouse associations as private lenders of last resort. He completes this history with a study of the legislation that fundamentally changed the power and scope of the Federal Reserve System—the Banking Act of 1935 and the Monetary Control Act of 1980. Writing in nontechnical language, Timberlake demystifies two centuries of monetary policy. He concludes that central banking has been largely a series of politically inspired government-serving actions that have burdened the private economy.
The 388th Bombardment Group (H) arrived at Station 136, Knettishall, England, in mid-1943 and sent B-17s against Nazi Germany for two years, until its mission was accomplished. The Group stood down in June, 1945. This is the compelling story of the men of the 388th, the combat crews and the ground support, told in their own words. Here, in this second of two volumes, are their true, detailed and enthralling accounts of air combat and base life, of terror in the skies and mischief on the ground-tales of Knettishall, "The Country Club of the Eighth Air Force," of leaves in London and forced POW marches, of wartime romances, the horror of combat, personal tragedies and heroic escapes. Tales of fear and pride, loneliness and resolve; tales of life and death. Through personal reminiscences, mission diaries, photographs, daily bulletins, base newsletters, newspaper articles and radio interviews, the 388th Anthology tells the full and exciting story of what it was like to be there as history was made and the world was saved.
Providing a unique perspective on economic history and policy, this book shows how a daring method once recommended by top economists could be adapted to help America pay for the things it needs. Written in a crisp, fast-paced style, this groundbreaking work presents an in-depth account of monetary theory and practice as the basis for its suggestion of a new system of money creation. First, the economic history of the United States is explored, with special emphasis on the years from the Civil War to the Great Depression. The proposal that follows, based on a long-lost method of money creation, is related to that context, as well as to America's current situation, both economic and political. Readers will learn how banks have created most of America's money supply since the nation's founding, but also about experiments with an alternative system in which the government plays that role. The crux of the book is an examination of the way in which the two systems could be harmonized to pay for public necessities without increasing taxes or national debt. The proposed new system of money creation would incorporate two complementary money streams—the existing banking system run by the Federal Reserve and a new stream of money created by Congress. By integrating the "Greenback" method with the fiscal and monetary status quo, the author argues, the United States could spend its way back to greatness.
Richard Hamm examines prohibitionists' struggle for reform from the late nineteenth century to their great victory in securing passage of the Eighteenth Amendment. Because the prohibition movement was a quintessential reform effort, Hamm uses it as a case study to advance a general theory about the interaction between reformers and the state during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Most scholarship on prohibition focuses on its social context, but Hamm explores how the regulation of commerce and the federal tax structure molded the drys' crusade. Federalism gave the drys a restricted setting--individual states--as a proving ground for their proposals. But federal policies precipitated a series of crises in the states that the drys strove to overcome. According to Hamm, interaction with the federal government system helped to reshape prohibitionists' legal culture--that is, their ideas about what law was and how it could be used. Originally published in 1995. 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.
To Make A Spotless Orange is the story of science with a mission: the use of organisms to attack pests. Few states showed very little interest after the first commercial pesticides appeared in the late nineteenth century. In california alone, entomologists persevered in developing both the theory and practice of biological control. These entomologists were neither environmentalists nor health crusaders, but scientist s who believed that their method would be the cheapest and most effective in the long run.
This book reviews nine Supreme Court cases and decisions that dealt with monetary laws and gives a summary history of monetary events and policies as they were affected by the Court's decisions. Several cases and decisions had notable consequences on the monetary history of the United States, some of which were blatant misjudgments stimulated by political pressures. The cases included in this book begin with McCulloch v. Maryland in 1819 and end with the Gold Clause Cases in 1934–5. Constitutional Money examines three institutions that were prominent in these decisions: the Supreme Court, the gold standard and the Federal Reserve System. The final chapter describes the adjustments necessary to return to a gold standard and briefly examines the constitutional alternatives.
The newest volume in the Oxford History of the United States series, The Republic for Which It Stands argues that the Gilded Age, along with Reconstruction--its conflicts, rapid and disorienting change, hopes and fears--formed the template of American modernity.
Despite more than 15 years of effort, it is widely acknowledged that internal reform of the public schools has produced little, if any, success. This has led to renewed interest in alternative forms of educational delivery to devolve decision-making through charter schools, public and private voucher plans, contracting out educational services, and home schooling. However, such reforms have largely been resisted by public school interest groups, including teacher unions, state departments of education, colleges of education, and school board and administrator organizations that have fought any but the most benign changes. Less attention has been given to another option that has been quietly growing in importance: private, for-profit schools. Firms in the private sector are typically more productive and responsive to consumer demands than their public sector counterparts. Can Teachers Own Their Own Schools? examines the economics, history, and politics of education and argues that public schools should be privatized. Privatized public schools would benefit from competition, market discipline, and the incentives essential to produce cost-effective educational quality, and attract the additional funding and expertise needed to revolutionize school systems. Drawing inspiration from Margaret Thatcher's privatization of government council housing in England, privatization reforms in Latin America, and the E.S.O.P. (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) movement in the United States, Vedder presents a bold plan in which teachers, administrators, and others involved in the educational process would become the owners of schools, acquiring an attractive financial stake in the process. Such privatization reforms could pave the way for new, cost-effective means of improving educational outcomes. As a result, schools in which teachers, administrators, and parents have a significant financial stake would foster vibrant school communities with increased parental involvement and the innovation and efficiency essential to produce educational excellence.
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