In Building a Bridge to the 18th Century , acclaimed cultural critic Neil Postman offers a cure for the hysteria and hazy values of the postmodern world. Postman shows us how to reclaim that balance between mind and machine in a dazzling celebration of the accomplishments of the Enlightenment-from Jefferson's representative democracy to Locke's deductive reasoning to Rousseau's demand that the care and edification of children be considered an investment in our collective future. Here, too, is the bold assertion that Truth is invulnerable to fashion or the passing of time. Provocative and brilliantly argued, Building a Bridge to the 18th Century illuminates a navigable path through the Information Age-a byway whose signposts, it turns out, were there all along.

Using examples from a wide variety of conflicts, Lawrence Freedman shows that successful military command depends on the ability not only to use armed forces effectively but also to understand the political context in which they are operating. Command in war is about forging effective strategies and implementing them, making sure that orders are appropriate, well-communicated, and then obeyed. But it is also an intensely political process. This is largely because how wars are fought depends to a large extent on how their aims are set. It is also because commanders in one realm must possess the ability to work with other command structures, including those of other branches of the armed forces and allies. In Command, Lawrence Freedman explores the importance of political as well as operational considerations in command with a series of eleven vivid case studies, all taken from the period after 1945. Over this period, the risks of nuclear escalation led to a shift away from great power confrontations and towards civil wars, and advances in communication technologies made it easier for higher-level commanders to direct their subordinates. Freedman covers defeats as well as victories. Pakistani generals tried to avoid surrender as they were losing the eastern part of their country to India in 1971. Iraq's Saddam Hussein turned his defeats into triumphant narratives of victory. Osama bin Laden escaped the Americans in Afghanistan in 2001. The UK struggled as a junior partner to the US in Iraq after 2003. We come across insubordinate generals, such as Israel's Arik Sharon, and those in the French army in Algeria, so frustrated with their political leadership that they twice tried to change it. At the other end of the scale, Che Guevara in Congo in 1966 and Igor Girkin in Ukraine in 2014 both tried to spark local wars to suit their grandiose objectives. Freedman ends the book with a meditation on the future of command in a world that is becoming increasingly reliant on technologies like artificial intelligence. A wide-ranging and insightful history of the changing nature of command in the postwar era, this will stand as a definitive account of a foundational concept in both military affairs and politics.

This discussion of a range of interesting scientific phenomena deals with topics such as chaos theory, fingerprints, vampires, Damascus steel, and antibiotics. Discusses associated technology, and also the history behind various scientific discoveries. The author is the Julius Sumner Miller Fellow at the University of Sydney. He has appeared on popular TV and radio science shows, and published widely on various aspects of science.

With this first of eight volumes, the eminent economist Fritz Machlup launches his monumental inquiry into the production of knowledge as an economic activity. Volume I presents the conceptual framework for this inquiry and falls into three parts: Types of Knowledge, Qualities of Knowledge, and Knowledge as a Product. Originally published in 1981. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Excerpt from Elementary Education in England: With Special Reference to London, Liverpool, and Manchester There is probably no parallel in the history of education to the remarkable activity and progress which have characterized English education in all its branches since the opening of the present century. It would seem as if all the influences which retarded its development in the last century, the social, political, and religious interests, had entirely disappeared. But it would be a mistake to imagine that some thing in the nature of a revolution has taken place, or that a national scheme suddenly sprang into being by the will of some legislative body. Such a rapid change would be alien to the English political theory, which prefers progress to be slow and calculated, and intro duces compulsory legislation when the conditions are ripe for it. The theory of State control in education has, however, gradually been accepted, and the importance Of a national system of education is generally recognized, but it is not intended to surrender to the State that local and private freedom which has always been enjoyed in this matter. The State, under the new system, aims to furnish those conditions which make possible the exercise of local freedom in the interest of a well-coordinated and progressive system of education. Hence the central Government, through its education department, merely acts in an advisory and supervisory capacity, and encourages local effort by financial assistance, if certain minimum standards are observed. The control which the State exercises is accordingly financial, but otherwise no pressure is brought to bear on the local authorities, who are at liberty, if they can afford it, to use their inde pendemos in their own way, conduct any experiments they please, and remain free from central control, provided that they bear the expenses themselves. Thus the principle of devolution is applied to the administration of education, and, though the framework of a national system is already in existence, there is no approximation to the centralized and bureaucratic systems of France or Germany. The ultimate responsibility for education accordingly rests with the local authority. This principle of freedom is a characteristic feature of all branches of English education, and is carried through to the individual school. While this doctrine of freedom is to a great extent the secret of the strength of the English system, it is at the same time the cause of many of its weaknesses. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.