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Sharing Knowledge, Shaping Europe: US Technological Collaboration and Nonproliferation
by John KrigeIn the 1950s and the 1960s, U.S. administrations were determined to prevent Western European countries from developing independent national nuclear weapons programs. To do so, the United States attempted to use its technological pre-eminence as a tool of "soft power" to steer Western European technological choices toward the peaceful uses of the atom and of space, encouraging options that fostered collaboration, promoted nonproliferation, and defused challenges to U.S. technological superiority. In Sharing Knowledge, Shaping Europe, John Krige describes these efforts and the varying degrees of success they achieved. Krige explains that the pursuit of scientific and technological leadership, galvanized by America's Cold War competition with the Soviet Union, was also used for techno-political collaboration with major allies. He examines a series of multinational arrangements involving shared technological platforms and aimed at curbing nuclear proliferation, and he describes the roles of the Department of State, the Atomic Energy Commission, and NASA. To their dismay, these agencies discovered that the use of technology as an instrument of soft power was seriously circumscribed, by internal divisions within successive administrations and by external opposition from European countries. It was successful, Krige argues, only when technological leadership was embedded in a web of supportive "harder" power structures.
The Hidden History of Code-Breaking: The Secret World of Cyphers, Uncrackable Codes, and Elusive Encryptions
by Sinclair McKayA fascinating exploration of the uncrackable codes and secret cyphers that helped win wars, spark revolutions and change the faces of nations.There have been secret codes since before the Old Testament, and there were secret codes in the Old Testament, too. Almost as soon as writing was invented, so too were the devious means to hide messages and keep them under the wraps of secrecy. In The Hidden History of Code Breaking, Sinclair McKay explores these uncrackable codes, secret ciphers, and hidden messages from across time to tell a new history of a secret world. From the temples of Ancient Greece to the court of Elizabeth I; from antique manuscripts whose codes might hold prophecies of doom to the modern realm of quantum mechanics, we will see how a few concealed words could help to win wars, spark revolutions and even change the faces of great nations. Here is the complete guide to the hidden world of codebreaking, with opportunities for you to see if you could have cracked some of the trickiest puzzles and lip-chewing codes ever created.
Great Projects: The Epic Story of the Building of America, from the Taming of the Mississippi to the Invention of the Internet
by James TobinSince the earliest days of the republic, great engineering projects have shaped American landscapes and expressed American dreams. The ambition to build lies as close to the nation's heart as the belief in liberty. We live in a built civilization, connected one to another in an enormous web of technology. Yet we have all too often overlooked the role of engineers and builders in American history. With glorious photographs and epic narrative sweep, Great Projects at last gives their story the prominence it deserves.Each of the eight projects featured in this masterful narrative was a milestone in its own right: the flood-control works of the lower Mississippi, Hoover Dam, Edison's lighting system, the spread of electricity across the nation, the great Croton Aqueduct, the bridges of New York City, Boston's revamped street system, known as the Big Dig, and the ever-evolving communica- tions network called the Internet. Each project arose from a heroic vision. Each encountered obstacles. Each reveals a tale of genius and perseverance.James Tobin, winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award, explains the four essential tasks of the engineer: to protect people from the destructive force of water while harnessing it for the enormous good it can do; to provide people with electricity, the motive force of modern life; to make great cities habitable and vital; and to create the pathways that connect place to place and person to person. Tobin focuses on the indi- viduals behind our greatest structures of earth and concrete and steel: James Buchanan Eads, who walked on the floor of the Mississippi to learn the river's secrets; Arthur Powell Davis and Frank Crowe, who imagined a dam that could transform the West; Thomas Edison, who envisioned a new way to light the world; Samuel Insull, the organizational mastermind of the electrical revolution; the long-forgotten John Bloomfield Jervis, who assured New York's future with the gift of clean water; Othmar Ammann, the modest Swiss-American who fought his mentor to become the first engineer to bridge the lower Hudson River; Fred Salvucci, the antihighway rebel who transformed the face of Boston; and J.C.R. Licklider, the obscure scientist who first imagined the Internet. Here, too, are the workers who scorned hardship to turn the engineers' dreams into reality, deep underground and high in the sky, through cold and heat and danger. In Great Projects -- soon to be a major PBS television series by the Emmy Award-winning Great Projects Film Company -- we share their dreams and witness their struggles; we watch them create the modern world we walk through each day -- the "city upon a hill" that became our America.
War Games: A History of War on Paper
by Philipp Von Hilgers Ross BenjaminFor centuries, both mathematical and military thinkers have used game-like scenarios to test their visions of mastering a complex world through symbolic operations. By the end of World War I, mathematical and military discourse in Germany simultaneously discovered the game as a productive concept. Mathematics and military strategy converged in World War II when mathematicians designed fields of operation. In this book, Philipp von Hilgers examines the theory and practice of war games through history, from the medieval game boards, captured on parchment, to the paper map exercises of the Third Reich. Von Hilgers considers how and why war games came to exist: why mathematical and military thinkers created simulations of one of the most unpredictable human activities on earth. Von Hilgers begins with the medieval rythmomachia, or Battle of Numbers, then reconstructs the ideas about war and games in the baroque period. He investigates the role of George Leopold von Reiswitz's tactical war game in nineteenth-century Prussia and describes the artifact itself: a game board--topped table with drawers for game implements. He explains Clausewitz's emphasis on the "fog of war" and the accompanying element of incalculability, examines the contributions of such thinkers as Clausewitz, Leibniz, Wittgenstein, and von Neumann, and investigates the war games of the German military between the two World Wars. Baudrillard declared this to be the age of simulacra; war games stand contrariwise as simulations that have not been subsumed in absolute virtuality.
21st Century Sims
by Edited by Benjamin F. ArmstrongFor more than two decades at the beginning of the 20th century William S. Sims was at the forefront of naval affairs. From the revolution in naval gunnery that he led as a junior officer, to his advocacy for the Dreadnaught style all-big-gun battleship, to his development of torpedo boat and destroyer operations, he was a central figure in helping to prepare the U. S. Navy for World War I. During the war he served as the senior naval commander in Europe and was instrumental in the establishment of the convoy system that won the Battle of the Atlantic. Following the war his leadership as President of the Naval War College established the foundations of the creative and innovative Navy that would develop the operating concepts for submarines and aircraft carriers which would lead to success in World War II. Despite his dramatic impact on the U. S. Navy in the first half of the 20th century, Sims is a relatively unknown figure today. Overshadowed in our memory by the World War II generation of strategic Admirals, like Chester Nimitz and Raymond Spruance, he receives little attention from historians or professional naval officers. Despite the fact that he won a Pulitzer Prize for history, hardly anyone reads the books or articles he left as his legacy. This collection of six essays written by Sims illustrates why his thinking and leadership are relevant to the challenges faced in the 21st century. From the perils of military conservatism, to the responsibilities of the professional officer, to military downsizing and reform, he helped lay the foundations of the modern Navy. Armstrong’s introductions and analysis of these essays links them directly to the issues of innovation, professional education, and leadership that are as important at the start of this century as they were at the start of the last.
Old Growth Urban Forests
by Robert E. LoebMillions of urbanites never see primeval forests during their lives except for the old growth forests found in urban parks. Unfortunately, these forests are on the verge of disappearing because arboreal reproduction is lost to human trampling and park administrators and urban foresters do not maintain these "natural" forests. To aid urban foresters and park managers in meeting the challenges, research on old growth forests in urban parks is synthesized in terms of historical ecology to introduce the methods utilized to reveal long-term forest composition changes. The case study of three stands in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, PA relates pre-chestnut blight tree species densities and post-chestnut blight arboreal changes to fire and visitor trampling. The information gained on how urban old growth forests have developed and changed is used to develop restoration ecology based frameworks to restore species composition and address challenges to forest survival including invasive species.
Mechanical Appliances, Mechanical Movements and Novelties of Construction
by Gardner D. HiscoxFrom the devices that power ships and trains to the workings of clocks, typewriters, and guns, this engrossing visual narrative profiles the specific and unique properties of hundreds of mechanical devices. Nearly 1,000 detailed illustrations depict steam-powered appliances, spring-powered devices, hydraulic equipment, and other machines, many of which remain in common use today. Each apparatus features a detailed line drawing and an informative explanation of its workings and uses. A final chapter chronicles 400 years of impassioned but futile searching for a perpetual motion machine.The companion to Dover's 1800 Mechanical Movements, Devices and Appliances, this volume features fewer but more complex machines than its predecessor. Today's readers--especially engineers, inventors, and other mechanically inclined individuals--will find endless fascination and inspiration among the novelty and variety of these ingenious mechanical designs.
Technoscience in History: Prussia, 1750-1850 (Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology)
by Ursula KleinThe second edition of a comprehensive introduction to machine learning approaches used in predictive data analytics, covering both theory and practice.Machine learning is often used to build predictive models by extracting patterns from large datasets. These models are used in predictive data analytics applications including price prediction, risk assessment, predicting customer behavior, and document classification. This introductory textbook offers a detailed and focused treatment of the most important machine learning approaches used in predictive data analytics, covering both theoretical concepts and practical applications. Technical and mathematical material is augmented with explanatory worked examples, and case studies illustrate the application of these models in the broader business context.
Protecting and Exploiting New Technology and Designs
by K. HodkinsonThe protection of intellectual property rights has become a major concern in recent years. The opportunities being seized, or lost, in areas such as computer software or biotechnology have captured most of the headlines but in every research facility, whatever the subject, there is an increased awareness of the importance to R & D management of a more commercial attitude. Keith Hodkinson has run Government sponsored "professional updating" courses for academic and industrial researchers and business executives. The practical questions raised there and the advice found most useful have all helped to make this guide a down-to-earth source of help which will be of immediate, profitable use to its readers. Appendices to the book as well as giving lists of useful names and addresses to contact also contain examples of draft letters, contracts and record forms and licensing negotiating checklists.
Interface
by Branden HookwayIn this book, Branden Hookway considers the interface not as technology but as a form of relationship with technology. The interface, Hookway proposes, is at once ubiquitous and hidden from view. It is both the bottleneck through which our relationship to technology must pass and a productive encounter embedded within the use of technology. It is a site of contestation -- between human and machine, between the material and the social, between the political and the technological -- that both defines and elides differences. A virtuoso in multiple disciplines, Hookway offers a theory of the interface that draws on cultural theory, political theory, philosophy, art, architecture, new media, and the history of science and technology. He argues that the theoretical mechanism of the interface offers a powerful approach to questions of the human relationship to technology. Hookway finds the origin of the term interface in nineteenth-century fluid dynamics and traces its migration to thermodynamics, information theory, and cybernetics. He discusses issues of subject formation, agency, power, and control, within contexts that include technology, politics, and the social role of games. He considers the technological augmentation of humans and the human-machine system, discussing notions of embodied intelligence. Hookway views the figure of the subject as both receiver and active producer in processes of subjectification. The interface, he argues, stands in a relation both alien and intimate, vertiginous and orienting to those who cross its threshold.
Biographical Memoirs: Volume 74
by National Academy of Sciences StaffMemoirs of histories more distinguished figures
Dr. Hyde and Mr. Stevenson
by Harold Winfield KentDr. Hyde and Mr. Stevenson: the life of the Rev. Dr. Charles McEwen Hyde, including a discussion of the open letter of Robert Louis Stevenson.
Bauphysik Kalender 2015: Schwerpunkt: Simulations- und Berechnungsverfahren (Bauphysik Kalender)
by Nabil A. FouadDie technische Komplexität von Gebäuden hat massiv zuggenommen. Fast alle Bereiche der Gebäudetechnik sind heute zumindest teilweise automatisiert, um z. B. das Raumklima zu optimieren, den Energieverbrauch zu senken, Brand- und Rauchentwicklung frühzeitig zu erkennen und zu unterbinden und im Ganzen eine kostengünstigere Bewirtschaftung zu ermöglichen. Numerische Simulationsverfahren sind daher aus der Gebäudeplanung und im Bestand nicht mehr wegzudenken und werden auf allen Gebieten der Bauphysik eingesetzt. Ihre Anwendung erfordert Hintergrundwissen zu den verwendeten Berechnungsverfahren, um sie wirtschaftlich einzusetzen und Fehler zu vermeiden. Auch die Modellgenauigkeit spielt für die Interpretation von Simulationsergebnissen eine bedeutende Rolle und wird häufig unterschätzt, ihre Verifikation muss nachvollziehbar sein. Außerdem sind aufgrund von Vereinfachungen manche Ergebnisse nur für bestimmte Parameter brauchbar. Nicht zuletzt erfordert die Anwendung und Interpretation von Simulationen auch die Berücksichtigung von eventuellen Ungenauigkeiten der Eingabeparameter. Der Bauphysik-Kalender 2015 gibt wertvolle Praxishinweise zur Softwareanwendung anhand von Beispielen.
The Autobiography of Charles Darwin: Super Large Print Edition Of The Classic Memoir For Low Vision Readers (Barnes And Noble Library Of Essential Reading Series)
by Charles DarwinA small collection of letters written by that most famous of English naturalists, Charles Darwin. The letters cover subjects such as his marriage, his time at Cambridge, his 'Voyage of the Beagle', and his return to England.
21st Century Ellis
by Edited by B. A. FriedmanFor years, the Marine Corps has touted the prescience of Lieutenant Colonel "Pete” Ellis, USMC, who predicted in 1921 that the United States would fight Japan and how the Pacific Theater would be won. Now, for the first time, those predictions and other works by the "amphibious prophet” are available in print. Included is two works by Ellis on naval and amphibious operations, including Advanced Base Operations in Micronesia, the study of tactics and operations in the Pacific Ocean that the United States Navy and Marine Corps would use to win the war against Imperial Japan. Ellis describes the form and functions of a modern Marine Corps designed to win its Nation’s battles. Ellis’ ideas about how the Marine Corps should fight are still in use throughout the world today. Ellis’ ideas on amphibious operations are well known, but his ideas on counterinsurgency and conventional war have been overshadowed and forgotten. Ellis wrote two articles based on his warfighting experiences in the Philippines and as part of the American Expeditionary Force in Europe during World War I. These articles, last published in the early 1920’s, are both republished in this book and show Ellis as a prescient thinker who was ahead of his time. Ellis identifies concepts that the U. S. military struggles with even today, and that other thinkers would not identify for decades after Ellis’ death. Also included are six essays by the editor, introducing the ideas of Pete Ellis and putting them in a modern context. As the United States turns its focus to the Pacific, Ellis’ ideas can inform policymakers on the dynamics of strategy and warfare in the vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean. Edited by Captain B. A. Friedman, USMC, 21st Century Ellis reveals the strategic insights of Pete Ellis for then and now.
Sustainable Urban Metabolism
by Paulo Ferrão John E. FernándezUrbanization and globalization have shaped the last hundred years. These two dominanttrends are mutually reinforcing: globalization links countries through the networked communicationsof urban hubs. The urban population now generates more than eighty percent of global GDP. Citiesaccount for enormous flows of energy and materials -- inflows of goods and services and outflows ofwaste. Thus urban environmental management critically affects global sustainability. In this book,Paulo Ferrão and John Fernndez offer a metabolic perspective on urban sustainability, viewingthe city as a metabolism, in terms of its exchanges of matter and energy. Their book provides aroadmap to the strategies and tools needed for a scientifically based framework for analyzing andpromoting the sustainability of urban systems. Using the concept of urbanmetabolism as a unifying framework, Ferrão and Fernandez describe a systems-oriented approachthat establishes useful linkages among environmental, economic, social, and technical infrastructureissues. These linkages lead to an integrated information-intensive platform that enablesecologically informed urban planning. After establishing the theoretical background and describingthe diversity of contributing disciplines, the authors sample sustainability approaches and tools,offer an extended study of the urban metabolism of Lisbon, and outline the challenges andopportunities in approaching urban sustainability in both developed and developing countries.
Sustainable Urban Metabolism
by Paulo Ferrao John E. FernandezA unified framework for analyzing urban sustainability in terms of cities' inflows and outflows of matter and energy.Urbanization and globalization have shaped the last hundred years. These two dominant trends are mutually reinforcing: globalization links countries through the networked communications of urban hubs. The urban population now generates more than eighty percent of global GDP. Cities account for enormous flows of energy and materials—inflows of goods and services and outflows of waste. Thus urban environmental management critically affects global sustainability. In this book, Paulo Ferrão and John Fernández offer a metabolic perspective on urban sustainability, viewing the city as a metabolism, in terms of its exchanges of matter and energy. Their book provides a roadmap to the strategies and tools needed for a scientifically based framework for analyzing and promoting the sustainability of urban systems. Using the concept of urban metabolism as a unifying framework, Ferrão and Fernandez describe a systems-oriented approach that establishes useful linkages among environmental, economic, social, and technical infrastructure issues. These linkages lead to an integrated information-intensive platform that enables ecologically informed urban planning. After establishing the theoretical background and describing the diversity of contributing disciplines, the authors sample sustainability approaches and tools, offer an extended study of the urban metabolism of Lisbon, and outline the challenges and opportunities in approaching urban sustainability in both developed and developing countries.
Homeplug AV and IEEE 1901
by Larry Yonge Sherman Gavette Srinivas Katar Haniph A. LatchmanThe only authorized book explaining the HomePlug networking standardsHomePlug is a growing technology for creating high-speed Power Line Communication (PLC) networks by transmitting data over in-home or in-office power lines. Users only need to plug adapters into wall outlets to create an instant network of computers, printers, routers, home entertainment devices, and appliance control systems.HomePlug AV and IEEE 1901: A Handbook for PLC Designers and Users provides for the first time an opportunity for non-members of the HomePlug Alliance to gain in-depth insight into the design and operation of the HomePlug standards. Offering a clear and simple description of the standards, this groundbreaking resource presents HomePlug AV and the associated IEEE 1901 standards in terms more readily understood by a much wider audience, including nontechnical managers, engineers, students, and HomePlug designers.The book details the many benefits of HomePlug AV, including:An affordable, secure alternative or complement to WiFi--especially in buildings where WiFi reception is poor or running new network wires is impracticalHigher potential data transmission rates up to 200 MbpsSupport for multimedia applications such as HDTV and VoIPThe book also provides an overview of the HomePlug Green PHY standard that is targeted for use in smart energy applications, and the HomePlug AV 2.0 standard that operates at up to 1.5 Gbps.An essential tool for designers of HomePlug devices, network administrators, and individual users of HomePlug networks who need to understand the features and capabilities of HomePlug, HomePlug AV and IEEE 1901: A Handbook for PLC Designers and Users will also prove useful for researchers in academia and the power line communications industry.
Atari Age: The Emergence of Video Games in America
by Michael Z. NewmanBeginning with the release of the Magnavox Odyssey and Pong in 1972, video games, whether played in arcades and taverns or in family rec rooms, became part of popular culture, like television. In fact, video games were sometimes seen as an improvement on television because they spurred participation rather than passivity. These "space-age pinball machines" gave coin-operated games a high-tech and more respectable profile. In Atari Age, Michael Newman charts the emergence of video games in America from ball-and-paddle games to hits like Space Invaders and Pac-Man, describing their relationship to other amusements and technologies and showing how they came to be identified with the middle class, youth, and masculinity.Newman shows that the "new media" of video games were understood in varied, even contradictory ways. They were family fun (but mainly for boys), better than television (but possibly harmful), and educational (but a waste of computer time). Drawing on a range of sources -- including the games and their packaging; coverage in the popular, trade, and fan press; social science research of the time; advertising and store catalogs; and representations in movies and television -- Newman describes the series of cultural contradictions through which the identity of the emerging medium worked itself out. Would video games embody middle-class respectability or suffer from the arcade's unsavory reputation? Would they foster family togetherness or allow boys to escape from domesticity? Would they make the new home computer a tool for education or just a glorified toy? Then, as now, many worried about the impact of video games on players, while others celebrated video games for familiarizing kids with technology essential for the information age.
Debugging Game History: A Critical Lexicon
by Raiford Guins Henry LowoodEven as the field of game studies has flourished, critical historical studies of games have lagged behind other areas of research. Histories have generally been fact-by-fact chronicles; fundamental terms of game design and development, technology, and play have rarely been examined in the context of their historical, etymological, and conceptual underpinnings. This volume attempts to "debug" the flawed historiography of video games. It offers original essays on key concepts in game studies, arranged as in a lexicon -- from "Amusement Arcade" to "Embodiment" and "Game Art" to "Simulation" and "World Building." Written by scholars and practitioners from a variety of disciplines, including game development, curatorship, media archaeology, cultural studies, and technology studies, the essays offer a series of distinctive critical "takes" on historical topics. The majority of essays look at game history from the outside in; some take deep dives into the histories of play and simulation to provide context for the development of electronic and digital games; others take on such technological components of games as code and audio. Not all essays are history or historical etymology -- there is an analysis of game design, and a discussion of intellectual property -- but they nonetheless raise questions for historians to consider. Taken together, the essays offer a foundation for the emerging study of game history. ContributorsMarcelo Aranda, Brooke Belisle, Caetlin Benson-Allott, Stephanie Boluk, Jennifer deWinter, J. P. Dyson, Kate Edwards, Mary Flanagan, Jacob Gaboury, William Gibbons, Raiford Guins, Erkki Huhtamo, Don Ihde, Jon Ippolito, Katherine Isbister, Mikael Jakobsson, Steven E. Jones, Jesper Juul, Eric Kaltman, Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, Carly A. Kocurek, Peter Krapp, Patrick LeMieux, Henry Lowood, Esther MacCallum-Stewart, Ken S. McAllister, Nick Monfort, David Myers, James Newman, Jenna Ng, Michael Nitsche, Laine Nooney, Hector Postigo, Jas Purewal, Reneé H. Reynolds, Judd Ethan Ruggill, Marie-Laure Ryan, Katie Salen Tekinbas, Anastasia Salter, Mark Sample, Bobby Schweizer, John Sharp, Miguel Sicart, Rebecca Elisabeth Skinner, Melanie Swalwell, David Thomas, Samuel Tobin, Emma Witkowski, Mark J.P. Wolf
Putting the Barn Before the House: Women and Family Farming in Early Twentieth-Century New York
by Grey OsterudPutting the Barn Before the House features the voices and viewpoints of women born before World War I who lived on family farms in south-central New York. As she did in her previous book, Bonds of Community, for an earlier period in history, Grey Osterud explores the flexible and varied ways that families shared labor and highlights the strategies of mutuality that women adopted to ensure they had a say in family decision making. Sharing and exchanging work also linked neighboring households and knit the community together. Indeed, the culture of cooperation that women espoused laid the basis for the formation of cooperatives that enabled these dairy farmers to contest the power of agribusiness and obtain better returns for their labor. Osterud recounts this story through the words of the women and men who lived it and carefully explores their views about gender, labor, and power, which offered an alternative to the ideas that prevailed in American society. Most women saw "putting the barn before the house"-investing capital and labor in productive operations rather than spending money on consumer goods or devoting time to mere housework-as a necessary and rational course for families who were determined to make a living on the land and, if possible, to pass on viable farms to the next generation. Some women preferred working outdoors to what seemed to them the thankless tasks of urban housewives, while others worked off the farm to support the family. Husbands and wives, as well as parents and children, debated what was best and negotiated over how to allocate their limited labor and capital and plan for an uncertain future. Osterud tells the story of an agricultural community in transition amid an industrializing age with care and skill.
From the River to the Sea: The Untold Story of the Railroad War That Made the West
by John SedgwickA sweeping and lively history of one of the most dramatic stories never told—of the greatest railroad war of all time, fought by the daring leaders of the Santa Fe and the Rio Grande to seize, control, and create the American West. It is difficult to imagine now, but for all of its cloudy peaks and gorgeous coastline, the American West might have been barren tundra as far as most Americans knew well into the 19th century. While gauzy advertising promotions of the West as a paradise on earth intrigued citizens in the East and Midwest, many believed the journey too hazardous to be worthwhile—until 1869, when the first transcontinental railroad changed the face of transportation. Railroad companies soon became the rulers of western expansion, choosing routes, creating brand-new railroad towns, and building up remote settlements like Santa Fe, Albuquerque, San Diego, and El Paso into proper cities. But thinning federal grants left the routes incomplete, an opportunity that two brash new railroad men, armed with private investments and determination to build an empire across the Southwest clear to the Pacific, soon seized, leading to the greatest railroad war in American history. In From the River to the Sea, bestselling author John Sedgwick recounts, in vivid and thrilling detail, the decade-long fight between General William J. Palmer, the Civil War hero leading the &“little family&” of his Rio Grande, coming down from Denver, hoping to showcase the majesty of the Rockies, and William Barstow Strong, the hard-nosed manager of the corporate-minded Santa Fe, venturing west from Kansas. What begins as an accidental rivalry when the two lines cross in Colorado soon evolves into an all-out battle as each man tries to outdo the other—claiming exclusive routes through mountains, narrow passes, and the richest silver mines in the world; enlisting private armies to protect their land and lawyers to find loopholes; dispatching spies to gain information; and even using the power of the press and incurring the wrath of the God-like Robber Baron Jay Gould—to emerge victorious. By the end of the century, one man will fade into anonymity and disgrace. The other will achieve unparalleled success—and in the process, transform a sleepy backwater of thirty thousand called &“Los Angeles&” into a booming metropolis that will forever change the United States. Filled with colorful characters and high drama, told at the speed of a locomotive, From the River to the Sea is an unforgettable piece of American history—and one of the last great untold tales of the Wild West.
Taken for Grantedness
by Rich LingWhy do we feel insulted or exasperated when our friends and family don't answer their mobile phones? If the Internet has allowed us to broaden our social world into a virtual friend-net, the mobile phone is an instrument of a more intimate social sphere. The mobile phone provides a taken-for-granted link to the people to whom we are closest; when we are without it, social and domestic disarray may result. In just a few years, the mobile phone has become central to the functioning of society. In this book, Rich Ling explores the process by which the mobile phone has become embedded in society, comparing it to earlier technologies that changed the character of our social interaction and, along the way, became taken for granted. Ling, drawing on research, interviews, and quantitative material, shows how the mobile phone (and the clock and the automobile before it) can be regarded as a social mediation technology, with a critical mass of users, a supporting ideology, changes in the social ecology, and a web of mutual expectations regarding use. By examining the similarities and synergies among these three technologies, Ling sheds a more general light on how technical systems become embedded in society and how they support social interaction within the closest sphere of friends and family
Oil in Texas: The Gusher Age, 1895–1945 (Clifton and Shirley Caldwell Texas Heritage Series)
by Diana Davids Hinton Roger M. Olien"Comprehensive in its coverage, clearly organized and written, and thoroughly researched, this book fills a significant hole in the historical literature on Texas oil. "--Joe Pratt, Cullen Professor of History and Business, University of HoustonAs the twentieth century began, oil in Texas was easy to find, but the quantities were too small to attract industrial capital and production. Then, on January 10, 1901, the Spindletop gusher blew in. Over the next fifty years, oil transformed Texas, creating a booming economy that built cities, attracted out-of-state workers and companies, funded schools and universities, and generated wealth that raised the overall standard of living--even for blue-collar workers. No other twentieth-century development had a more profound effect upon the state. In this book, Roger M. Olien and Diana Davids Olien chronicle the explosive growth of the Texas oil industry from the first commercial production at Corsicana in the 1890s through the vital role of Texas oil in World War II. Using both archival records and oral histories, they follow the wildcatters and the gushers as the oil industry spread into almost every region of the state. The authors trace the development of many branches of the petroleum industry--pipelines, refining, petrochemicals, and natural gas. They also explore how overproduction and volatile prices led to increasing regulation and gave broad regulatory powers to the Texas Railroad Commission.
Nature Guiding
by William Gould VinalNature Guiding is the science of inculcating nature enthusiasm, nature principles, and nature facts into the spirit of individuals. "Doing" nature-study means observing, wondering, and solving problems. It could include collecting, building, measuring, painting, planning, writing, touching, experimenting or any of a wide range of other activities. Most importantly, it allows children to be "original investigators."This book is intended as a resource for teachers and students engaged in nature study at summer camps and in schools. William Gould Vinal believed that the teacher of nature study should be "in sympathy with the simple life and the country way," that the nature study should emphasize observation of the interactions of plants and animals in their environment, and not be reduced to matters of taxonomy and anatomy. In Nature Guiding, he offers advice to camp counselors and school teachers on incorporating nature study into everyday activities, as well as suggestions for parents and others about using visits to state and national parks to teach nature lore.