Reinforced Concrete and the Modernization of American Building, 1900-1930

Reinforced Concrete and the Modernization of American Building, 1900-1930
Author: Amy E. Slaton
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2003-04-01
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0801872979

Examining the proliferation of reinforced-concrete construction in the United States after 1900, historian Amy E. Slaton considers how scientific approaches and occupations displaced traditionally skilled labor. The technology of concrete buildings—little studied by historians of engineering, architecture, or industry—offers a remarkable case study in the modernization of American production. The use of concrete brought to construction the new procedures and priorities of mass production. These included a comprehensive application of science to commercial enterprise and vast redistributions of skills, opportunities, credit, and risk in the workplace. Reinforced concrete also changed the American landscape as building buyers embraced the architectural uniformity and simplicity to which the technology was best suited. Based on a wealth of data that includes university curricula, laboratory and company records, organizational proceedings, blueprints, and promotional materials as well as a rich body of physical evidence such as tools, instruments, building materials, and surviving reinforced-concrete buildings, this book tests the thesis that modern mass production in the United States came about not simply in answer to manufacturers' search for profits, but as a result of a complex of occupational and cultural agendas.

Modernizing a Slave Economy

Modernizing a Slave Economy
Author: John Majewski
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2011-04-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807882372

What would separate Union and Confederate countries look like if the South had won the Civil War? In fact, this was something that southern secessionists actively debated. Imagining themselves as nation builders, they understood the importance of a plan for the economic structure of the Confederacy. The traditional view assumes that Confederate slave-based agrarianism went hand in hand with a natural hostility toward industry and commerce. Turning conventional wisdom on its head, John Majewski's analysis finds that secessionists strongly believed in industrial development and state-led modernization. They blamed the South's lack of development on Union policies of discriminatory taxes on southern commerce and unfair subsidies for northern industry. Majewski argues that Confederates' opposition to a strong central government was politically tied to their struggle against northern legislative dominance. Once the Confederacy was formed, those who had advocated states' rights in the national legislature in order to defend against northern political dominance quickly came to support centralized power and a strong executive for war making and nation building.

Economic Security: Neglected Dimension of National Security ?

Economic Security: Neglected Dimension of National Security ?
Author: National Defense University (U S )
Publisher: Government Printing Office
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2011-12-27
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

On August 24-25, 2010, the National Defense University held a conference titled “Economic Security: Neglected Dimension of National Security?” to explore the economic element of national power. This special collection of selected papers from the conference represents the view of several keynote speakers and participants in six panel discussions. It explores the complexity surrounding this subject and examines the major elements that, interacting as a system, define the economic component of national security.

The Long Game

The Long Game
Author: Rush Doshi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2021-06-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0197527876

For more than a century, no US adversary or coalition of adversaries - not Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or the Soviet Union - has ever reached sixty percent of US GDP. China is the sole exception, and it is fast emerging into a global superpower that could rival, if not eclipse, the United States. What does China want, does it have a grand strategy to achieve it, and what should the United States do about it? In The Long Game, Rush Doshi draws from a rich base of Chinese primary sources, including decades worth of party documents, leaked materials, memoirs by party leaders, and a careful analysis of China's conduct to provide a history of China's grand strategy since the end of the Cold War. Taking readers behind the Party's closed doors, he uncovers Beijing's long, methodical game to displace America from its hegemonic position in both the East Asia regional and global orders through three sequential "strategies of displacement." Beginning in the 1980s, China focused for two decades on "hiding capabilities and biding time." After the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, it became more assertive regionally, following a policy of "actively accomplishing something." Finally, in the aftermath populist elections of 2016, China shifted to an even more aggressive strategy for undermining US hegemony, adopting the phrase "great changes unseen in century." After charting how China's long game has evolved, Doshi offers a comprehensive yet asymmetric plan for an effective US response. Ironically, his proposed approach takes a page from Beijing's own strategic playbook to undermine China's ambitions and strengthen American order without competing dollar-for-dollar, ship-for-ship, or loan-for-loan.

The Paradox of Power

The Paradox of Power
Author: David C. Gompert
Publisher: Government Printing Office
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2020
Genre:
ISBN: 9780160915734

The second half of the 20th century featured a strategic competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. That competition avoided World War III in part because during the 1950s, scholars like Henry Kissinger, Thomas Schelling, Herman Kahn, and Albert Wohlstetter analyzed the fundamental nature of nuclear deterrence. Decades of arms control negotiations reinforced these early notions of stability and created a mutual understanding that allowed U.S.-Soviet competition to proceed without armed conflict. The first half of the 21st century will be dominated by the relationship between the United States and China. That relationship is likely to contain elements of both cooperation and competition. Territorial disputes such as those over Taiwan and the South China Sea will be an important feature of this competition, but both are traditional disputes, and traditional solutions suggest themselves. A more difficult set of issues relates to U.S.-Chinese competition and cooperation in three domains in which real strategic harm can be inflicted in the current era: nuclear, space, and cyber. Just as a clearer understanding of the fundamental principles of nuclear deterrence maintained adequate stability during the Cold War, a clearer understanding of the characteristics of these three domains can provide the underpinnings of strategic stability between the United States and China in the decades ahead. That is what this book is about.