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The growth of American engineering and science has affected military technology, organization, and practice from the colonial era to the present day—even as military concerns have influenced, and often funded, domestic engineering programs and scientific development. American Military Technology traces the interplay of technology and science with the armed forces of the United States in terms of what Hacker and Vining view as epochs: 1840–1865, the introduction of modern small arms, steam power, and technology, science, and medicine; 1900–1914, the naval arms race, torpedoes and submarines, and the signal corps and the airplane; and 1965–1971, McNamara's Pentagon, technology in Vietnam, guided missiles, and smart bombs. The book is an excellent springboard for understanding the complex relationship of science, technology, and war in American history.
Unforgettable congressional hearings in 1978 revealed that fallout from American nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s had overexposed hundreds of soldiers and other citizens to radiation. Faith in governmental integrity was shaken, and many people have assumed that such overexposure caused great damage. Yet important questions remain--the most controversial being: did the radiation overexposure in fact cause the cancers and birth defects for which it has been blamed? Elements of Controversy is the result of a decade of exhaustive research in AEC documentary records and the full clinical and epidemiological literature on radiation effects. More concerned with uncovering the historical story t...
Military institutions have everywhere and always shaped the course of history, but women’s near universal participation in them has largely gone unnoticed. This volume addresses the changing relationships between women and armed forces from antiquity to the present. The eight chapters in Part I present broad, scholarly reviews of the existing literature to provide a clear understanding of where we stand. An extended picture essay documents visually women’s military work since the sixteenth century. The book’s second part comprises eight exemplary articles, more narrowly focused than the survey articles but illustrating some of their major themes. Military history will benefit from acknowledging women’s participation, as will women’s history from recognizing military institutions as major factors in molding women’s lives. Contributors include Jorit Wintjes, Mary Elizabeth Ailes, John A. Lynn, Barton C. Hacker, Kimberly Jensen, Margaret Vining, D’Ann M. Campbell, Carol B. Stevens, Jan Noel, Elizabeth Prelinger, Donna Alvah, Karen Hagemann, Yehudit Kol-Inbar, Dorotea Gucciardo and Megan Howatt, and Judith Hicks Stiehm.
Presentations of war and violence in museums generally oscillate between the fascination of terror and its instruments and the didactic urge to explain violence and, by analysing it, make it easier to handle and prevent. The museums concerned also have to face up to these basic issues about the social and institutional handling of war and violence. Does war really belong in museums? And if it does, what objectives and means are involved? Can museums avoid trivializing and aestheticising war, transforming violence, injury, death and trauma into tourist sights? What images of shock or identification does one generate – and what images would be desirable?
Access—no single word better describes the primary concern of the exploration and development of space. Every participant in space activities—civil, military, scientific, or commercial—needs affordable, reliable, frequent, and flexible access to space. To Reach the High Frontier details the histories of the various space access vehicles developed in the United States since the birth of the space age in 1957. Each case study has been written by a specialist knowledgeable about the vehicle described and places each system in the larger context of the history of spaceflight. The technical challenge of reaching space with chemical rockets, the high costs associated with space launch, the long lead times necessary for scheduling flights, and the poor reliability of the rockets themselves show launch vehicles to be the space program's most difficult challenge.
Science in Uniform, Uniforms in Science: Historical Studies of American Military and Scientific Interactions is a collection of essays, which owes its existence to the fortuitous conjunction of two events. The first was a temporary exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington that opened in October 2002, entitled "West Point in the Making of America, 1802-1918." Sponsored by the U.S. Army, it commemorated the bicentennial of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Rather than recount the academy's history, however, this exhibit focused on the lives and work of a select group of West Point graduates, some famous, others less well known, in the context of ...
Gemini 4 pilot Ed White could see Hawaii, California, Texas, and Florida. Millions of Americans had seen these places before, but White had a unique view. He looked at them while walking in space. One hundred miles above Earth and moving freely outside the Gemini 4 spacecraft, White saw these states as tiny stepping stones. The first American spacewalk was a monumental achievement, and it helped push the space program toward its ultimate goal of landing men on the Moon. From the brave astronauts to the technology that made it possible, author Carl R. Green explores the astounding Gemini 4 mission.
The Manhattan Project—the World War II race to produce an atomic bomb—transformed the entire country in myriad ways, but it did not affect each region equally. Acting on an enduring perception of the American West as an “empty” place, the U.S. government located a disproportionate number of nuclear facilities—particularly the ones most likely to spread pollution—in western states. The Manhattan Project manufactured plutonium at Hanford, Washington; designed and assembled bombs at Los Alamos, New Mexico; and detonated the world’s first atomic bomb at Alamagordo, New Mexico, on June 16, 1945. In the years that followed the war, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission selected additiona...
This scholarly text focuses on the role of U.S. federal agencies in radiation safety and the evolution of radiation protection regulations. It traces how the principles and practices of radiation protection have changed over time in response to scientific and political developments. The primary purpose is to provide a foundation to the historical background to provide adequate protection against the hazards of radiation to workers exposed in their jobs and to the general public. Portions of this text include: Controversy over regulating medical radiation, Regulating medical uses of radiation, Exploration of some radiation hazards, EPA's revised occupational standards, The Clean Air Act amendments, and more Related products: Other products produced by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/agency/nuclear-regulatory-commission-nrc Nuclear Power & Radiation resources collection is available here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/nuclear-power-radiation