First published in 1972, Ronald W. Clark's definitive biography of Einstein, the Promethean figure of our age, goes behind the phenomenal intellect to reveal the human side of the legendary absent-minded professor. Here is the classic portrait of the scientist and the man: the boy growing up in the Swiss Alps, the young man caught in an unhappy first marriage, the passionate pacifist who agonized over making The Bomb, the indifferent Zionist asked to head the Israeli state, the physicist who believed in God. "Vivid and readable" -The New York Times
It is almost a century since Thomas Alva Edison, the world's greatest inventor, gave the world electric light - and exactly one hundred years since he built the first successful phonograph (forerunner of the gramophone). The man who declared that "genius is 1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration," and who on average lodged a patent every two weeks of his adult life, was the most famous American of his day. Only now, however, is it possible to present him clearly against the background of his times and to access fairly his achievements and his often controversial business and working methods. In Edison: The Man Who Made The Future, first published in 1977, Ronald Clark describes the inventors early untutored upbringing, his struggles in the industrial jungle which grew up in the aftermath of the American Civil War, and his vital contributions to what became the motion picture industry. A prolific inventor in his own right, he was also a developer of other men's ideas. A pacifist, he became President of the U.S. Naval Consulting Board in the First World War. Thrusting, enquiring, and determined to leave his mark on history, he was, perhaps, the archetypal American of his era.
Forty-seven percent of the American people, according to a 1991 Gallup poll, believe that God made man--as man is now--in a single act of creation, and within the last ten thousand years. Ronald L. Numbers chronicles the astonishing resurgence of this belief since the 1960s, as well as the creationist movement's tangled roots in the theologies of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Baptists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Adventists, and other religious groups. Even more remarkable than Numbers's story of today's widespread rejection of the theory of evolution is the dramatic shift from acceptance of the earth's antiquity to the insistence of present-day scientific creationists that most fossils date back to Noah's flood and its aftermath, and that the earth itself is not more than ten thousand years old. Numbers traces the evolution of scientific creationism and shows how the creationist movement challenges the very meaning of science.
Focusing on crucial aspects of the history of Darwinism in America, Numbers gets to the heart of American resistance to Darwin's ideas. He provides a much-needed historical perspective on today's quarrels about creationism and evolution--and illuminates the specifically American nature of this struggle.
Drawing case studies, the authors of this work examine how adaptive governance breaks the gridlock in natural-resource policy. Unlike scientific management, which relies on science as the foundation for policies made through a central authority, adaptive governance integrates other types of knowledge into the decision-making process. The authors emphasize the need for open decision making, recognition of multiple interests in questions of natural-resource policy, and an integrative, interpretive science to replace traditional reductive, experimental science.
This book describes all of the important factors that cause some students to have low reading achievement and others to have high reading achievement. It concentrates on the main factors that influence how much a student gains in reading achievement during a year of school, or a calendar year. An attempt is made to answer the following questions: what can educators do to increase reading achievement, and what is beyond their influence? The author is directly concerned with achievement associated with normal or typical reading. The focus of the book is on things teachers can do during an entire school year that are likely to improve the reading level and reading rate of students, which in turn, will increase their reading achievement. This effort to specify the most important causes of high and low reading achievement represents an integration of two disciplines of scientific psychology--experimental psychology and psychometrics. A glossary at the end of the book contains definitions of terms and concepts. Helpful appendices explain rauding theory, the three laws of rauding theory, and the equations that can be used to predict the accuracy of reading comprehension, provide conversions among units of rauding rate, and list the numbered equations presented in the book.
All but forgotten except as a part of nostalgic lore, American canals during the first half of the nineteenth century provided a transportation network that was vital to the development of the new nation. They lowered transportation costs, carried a vast grain trade from western farms to eastern ports, delivered Pennsylvania coal to New York, and carried thousands of passengers at what seemed effortless speed. Along their courses sprang up new towns and cities and with them new economic growth. Canals for a Nation brings together in one volume a survey of all the major American canals. Here are accounts of innovative engineering, of near heroic figures who devoted their lives to canals, and of canal projects that triumphed over all the uncertainties of the political process.
The variety and pervasiveness of confidentiality issues today is breathtaking. Not a day passes without a media report on a breach of confidentiality, a claim of attorney-client privilege, a journalist jailed for refusing to reveal a source, a medical or hospital record improperly disclosed, or a major business deal exposed by anonymous sources. In Confidence examines confidential issues that arise in various disciplines and relationships and considers which should be protected and which should not. Ronald Goldfarb organizes the book around professionals for whom confidentiality is an issue of weighty importance: government officials, attorneys, medical personnel, psychotherapists, clergy, business people, and journalists. In a chapter devoted to each, and in another on spousal privilege, he lays out specific issues and the laws positions on them. He discusses an array of court cases in which confidentiality issues played an important role and decisions were often surprising and controversial. Goldfarb also looks into the criteria that should be used when determining whether secrets must be revealed. His nuanced analysis reveals how federal government practices and technological capabilities increasingly challenge the boundaries of privacy, and his thoughtful insights open the door to meaningful new debate.
Ronald E. Powaski offers the first complete, accessible history of the events, forces, and factors that have brought the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust. He traces the evolution of the nuclear arms race from FDR's decision to develop an atomic bomb to Reagan's decision to continue its expansion in the 1980's. Focusing on the forces that have propelled the arms race and the reasons behind the repeated failures to check the proliferation of nuclear weapons, Powaski discusses such topics as the Manhattan Project, the decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima, the debate over whether to share atomic information, the effect of nuclear weapons on U.S. military and foreign policy, and the role of these weapons in arms control negotiations in the last five presidential administrations.
The shaping of American foreign policy by partisan politics is the timely theme of this book. The focus is on the Republican Party's response to the Korean War and the Party's rise to power during first "limited war" officially proclaimed by the United States. The book traces the changing character of the Party during the 1940s and 1950s, from its postwar struggles between the noninterventionists and the internationalists, through the debates over the supremacy of Europe or of Asia in U.S. foreign policy, the frustrating operations of a limited war, and finally the political strategies of settlement and compromise leading to the election of President Eisenhower. In this well documented study, Ronald J. Caridi applies Norman Graebner's test of a political party's wisdom: in attempting to expand its influence through the successful use of foreign policy symbols, do the assumptions of the party form the basis of responsible alternatives that recognize national limitations? The research here indicates failure in that test, although the Republican Party, in a now familiar role, had been successful in transforming popular discontent into political victory. The spirit, issues, and personalities of the times are illustrated by reprints of Herblock cartoons of the period.
We make our life with things, surrounded by technical artefacts and technologies. They are fundamental in the way we see and act, but only sometimes we are plenty aware of this. Where do these things come from? How were they produced? How do they define our possibilities and our identities? How do they determine the way we remember and project our future? This book explores these and other related questions analysing the relationships between technology, material memory, and forms of life, emphasizing the active and constitutive role that technologies play in our remembering with things. It argues that our common understanding of memory and its technological mediation is determined by a static view of technology, memory, and culture, and that this view is burdened by a dualism between the material and the immaterial, that overlooks the active role of memory and technology in our present forms of life and in the shaping of our future. To overcome this static view and its dualism, this book proposes a dynamic view of memory, technology, and culture, emphasising the active and constitute role of technologies in the shaping of our forms of life and including themes unusual in memory studies, such as the production of technology and the concept of nature. The approach of this book is theoretical and philosophical, but interdisciplinary, incorporating ideas and concepts from various disciplines, particularly the arts, humanities and social sciences.
First published in 1995. This is Volume 3 of the Creationism in Twenthieth-Century America anthology of documents from 1903 to 1961 and looks at antievolutionists in North Carolina and the work Arthur I. Brown.
Carl Jung was one of the world's most influential psychoanalysts. With the exception of Freud, who chose him as the first president of the International Psychoanalytic Association, no psychologist has achieved more. Previous biographers have either made Jung an idol or condemned him for his failings. Ronald Hayman neither ignores Jung's faults nor exaggerates them in investigating the most crucial paradoxes surrounding this enigmatic figure. Hailed by Anthony Storr as "the best biography of Jung," Hayman's work is "all the more effective for its detached tone that perfectly puts in proportion Jung's cruel, brilliant and crazy schemes" (The Times [London]). Impeccably researched and written with notable objectivity, A Life of Jung offers a rare insight into how Jung's revolutionary ideas grew out of his own extraordinary experiences. "Compelling....Hayman captures...the extraordinary charisma of his subject."--Newsday "Likely to become the standard biography of the revolutionary psychoanalyst."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review
Was Pope Pius XII a Nazi Sympathizer? For almost fifty years, a controversy has raged about Pope Pius XII. Was the Pope who had shepherded the Church through World War II a Nazi sympathizer? Was he, as some have dared call him, Hitler's pope? Did he do nothing to help the Jewish people in the grips of the Holocaust? In a thoroughly researched and meticulously documented analysis of the historical record, Ronald Rychlak has gotten past the anger and emotion and uncovered the truth about Pius XII. Not only does he refute the accusations against the Pope, but for the first time documents how the slanders against him had their roots in a Soviet Communist campaign to discredit him and, by extension, the Church. "Let those who doubt but read Rychlak, follow his exquisitely organized courtroon-like arguments. What Professor Rychlak brings to the forum are facts, not rhetoric; dates, not conjecture; evidence, not slander.... The world owes Ronald Rychlak a debt for bringing the truth to light." -- Rabbi Eric A. Silver "In his well-crafted pages...the portrait that emerges is one of an extraordinary pastor facing extremely vexing circumstances, of a holy man vying against an evil man, of a human being trying to save the lives of other human beings, of a light shining in the darkness." -- John Cardinal O'Connor (1920-2000) Archbishop of New York (from the Foreword to the first edition) "I have read many books on Pius XII, and this is by far the most dispassionate in laying out the context, relevant facts, accusations, and evidence pro and con. The book is highly engaging because it is filled with so many little-known facts. The research has been prodigious. Yet the presentation is as down-to-earth as it would have to be in a courtroom.... This is a wonderfully realistic book." -- Michael Novak, George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy, American Enterprise Institute
This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.
This reference work lists and describes all known tokens (privately issued substitutes for coins) used from the 1890s gold rush through 1959, when Alaska gained statehood. New to this edition are tokens from the Yukon Territory, with extensive coverage of Yukon tokens through 1989. Entries describe individual tokens, are arranged alphabetically, and are divided into seven sections: Traditional Alaska Tokens, Alaska Transportation Tokens, Alaska Food Stamp Change Tokens, Alaska Prison Tokens, Metallic Identification Chits, Yukon Territory Metallic Tokens 1897-1945, and Yukon Territory Plastic Tokens 1946-1989. For each token, information includes the issuer, a physical and historical description, and current value.
Over the past century, solutions to natural resources policy issues have become increasingly complex. Multiple government agencies with overlapping jurisdictions and differing mandates as well as multiple interest groups have contributed to gridlock, frequently preventing solutions in the common interest. Community-based responses to natural resource problems in the American West have demonstrated the potential of local initiatives both for finding common ground on divisive issues and for advancing the common interest. The first chapter of this enlightening book diagnoses contemporary problems of governance in natural resources policy and in the United States generally, then introduces community-based initiatives as responses to those problems. The next chapters examine the range of successes and failures of initiatives in water management in the Upper Clark Fork River in Montana; wolf recovery in the northern Rockies; bison management in greater Yellowstone; and forest policy in northern California. The concluding chapter considers how to harvest experience from these and other cases, offering practical suggestions for diverse participants in community-based initiatives and their supporters, agencies and interest groups, and researchers and educators.
New Musical Figurations exemplifies a dramatically new way of configuring jazz music and history. By relating biography to the cultural and musical contours of contemporary American life, Ronald M. Radano observes jazz practice as part of the complex interweaving of postmodern culture—a culture that has eroded conventional categories defining jazz and the jazz musician. Radano accomplishes all this by analyzing the creative life of Anthony Braxton, one of the most emblematic figures of this cultural crisis. Born in 1945, Braxton is not only a virtuoso jazz saxophonist but an innovative theoretician and composer of experimental art music. His refusal to conform to the conventions of official musical culture has helped unhinge the very ideologies on which definitions of "jazz," "black music," "popular music," and "art music" are founded. New Musical Figurations gives the richest view available of this many-sided artist. Radano examines Braxton's early years on the South Side of Chicago, whose vibrant black musical legacy inspired him to explore new avenues of expression. Here is the first detailed history of Braxton's central role in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the principal musician-run institution of free jazz in the United States. After leaving Chicago, Braxton was active in Paris and New York, collaborating with Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Frederic Rzewski, and other composers affiliated with the experimental-music movement. From 1974 to 1981, he gained renown as a popular jazz performer and recording artist. Since then he has taught at Mills College and Wesleyan University, given lectures on his theoretical musical system, and written works for chamber groups as well as large, opera-scale pieces. The neglect of radical, challenging figures like Braxton in standard histories of jazz, Radano argues, mutes the innovative voice of the African-American musical tradition. Refreshingly free of technical jargon, New Musical Figurations is more than just another variation on the same jazz theme. Rather, it is an exploratory work as rich in theoretical vision as it is in historical detail.
In this eloquent and provocative "open letter" to evangelicals, Ronald Osborn wrestles with the problem of biblical literalism and the ongoing challenge of animal suffering within an evolutionary understanding of the world. Osborn forces us to ask hard questions, not only of the Bible and church tradition, but also and especially of ourselves.
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