This highly acclaimed study approaches the space race as a problem in comparative public policy. Drawing on published literature, archival sources in both the United States and Europe, interviews with many of the key participants, and important declassified material, such as the National Security Council's first policy paper on space, McDougall examines U.S., European, and Soviet space programs and their politics. Opening with a short account of Nikolai Kibalchich, a late nineteenth-century Russian rocketry theoretician, McDougall argues that the Soviet Union made its way into space first because it was the world's first "technocracy"--which he defines as "the institutionalization of technological change for state purpose." He also explores the growth of a political economy of technology in both the Soviet Union and the United States.

From its shocking curtain-raiser--the conflagration that consumed Lower Manhattan in 1835--to the climactic centennial year of 1876, when Americans staged a corrupt, deadlocked presidential campaign (fought out in Florida), Walter A. McDougall's "Throes of Democracy" carries the saga of the American people's continuous self-reinvention across five tumultuous decades. From the inauguration of President Andrew Jackson through the eras of Manifest Destiny, Civil War, and Reconstruction, it is an epic in which Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, showman P. T. Barnum, and circus clown Dan Rice figure as prominently as Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and Henry Ward Beecher--a zesty, irreverent narrative that brazenly reveals our national penchant for pretense.

Walter McDougall offers an original analysis of Versailles diplomacy from the standpoint of the power that had the most direct interest and took the first initiatives in the search for a solution to the German problem. The author's new view of the struggle for execution or revision of the Versailles treaty holds sober implications for assessment of the political origins of international anarchy during the 1930s and European integration in the 1950s. He shows that the Treaty of Versailles was unenforceable, and that the French postwar government, far from enjoying predominance in Europe, suffered from financial crisis and economic and political inferiority to Germany. Versailles was thus the "Boche" peace, and the only path to a stable Europe seemed to lie through permanent restriction of German economic and political unity. Originally published in 1978. 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.

Walter McDougall offers an original analysis of Versailles diplomacy from the standpoint of the power that had the most direct interest and took the first initiatives in the search for a solution to the German problem. The author's new view of the struggle for execution or revision of the Versailles treaty holds sober implications for assessment of the political origins of international anarchy during the 1930s and European integration in the 1950s. He shows that the Treaty of Versailles was unenforceable, and that the French postwar government, far from enjoying predominance in Europe, suffered from financial crisis and economic and political inferiority to Germany. Versailles was thus the "Boche" peace, and the only path to a stable Europe seemed to lie through permanent restriction of German economic and political unity. Originally published in 1978. 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.

This highly acclaimed study approaches the space race as a problem in comparative public policy. Drawing on published literature, archival sources in both the United States and Europe, interviews with many of the key participants, and important declassified material, such as the National Security Council's first policy paper on space, McDougall examines U.S., European, and Soviet space programs and their politics. Opening with a short account of Nikolai Kibalchich, a late nineteenth-century Russian rocketry theoretician, McDougall argues that the Soviet Union made its way into space first because it was the world's first "technocracy" -- which he defines as "the institutionalization of technological change for state purpose." He also explores the growth of a political economy of technology in both the Soviet Union and the United States.

"Once every decade or so, a book comes along that stands by itself as a remarkable contribution to the literature of a field. Such a work is Walter A. McDougall's... the Heavens and the Earth." -- Technology and Culture

" A] boldly conceived, elegantly written, and unfailingly provocative history of the new age of space." -- Science

" An] immensely readable and elegant book" -- Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

This highly acclaimed study approaches the space race as a problem in comparative public policy. Drawing on published literature, archival sources in both the United States and Europe, interviews with many of the key participants, and important declassified material, such as the National Security Council's first policy paper on space, McDougall examines U.S., European, and Soviet space programs and their politics. Opening with a short account of Nikolai Kibalchich, a late nineteenth-century Russian rocketry theoretician, McDougall argues that the Soviet Union made its way into space first because it was the world's first "technocracy" -- which he defines as "the institutionalization of technological change for state purpose." He also explores the growth of a political economy of technology in both the Soviet Union and the United States.

"Once every decade or so, a book comes along that stands by itself as a remarkable contribution to the literature of a field. Such a work is Walter A. McDougall's... the Heavens and the Earth." -- Technology and Culture

" A] boldly conceived, elegantly written, and unfailingly provocative history of the new age of space." -- Science

" An] immensely readable and elegant book" -- Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

A powerful reinterpretation of the founding of America by a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. The creation of the United States of America is the central event of the past four hundred years," states Walter McDougall in his preface to Freedom Just Around the Corner. With this statement begins McDougall's most ambitious, original, and uncompromising of histories. McDougall marshals the latest scholarship and writes in a style redolent with passion, pathos, and humour in pursuit of truths often obscured in books burdened with political slants. With an insightful approach to the nearly 250 years spanning America's beginnings, McDougall offers his readers an understanding of the uniqueness of the "American character" and how this character has shaped the wide ranging course of historical events. McDougall explains that Americans have always been in a unique position of enjoying "more opportunity to pursue their ambitions䳨an any other people in history." Throughout Freedom Just Around the Corner the character of the American people shines, a character built out of a freedom to indulge in the whole panoply of human behaviour. The genius behind the success of the United States is founded on the complex, irrepressible American spirit. A grand narrative rich with new details and insights about colonial and early national history, Freedom Just Around the Corner is the first instalment of a trilogy that will eventually bring the story of America up to the present day, a story epic, bemusing, and brooding.