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This is an in-depth study of the battle of Midway that reviews the many previous accounts and compares their accuracy and veracity with fresh documentation that has been released recently, including new material on the post-war analysis made by a US select committee. There are new viewpoints on the muddle among the US Admirals; the total failure of the USAAF, despite elaborate claims; fresh thinking on the part played by the US Navy Dauntless dive-bombers in the action; the mystery of the carrier Saratoga's presence; Hollywood's totally wrong take on the battle in all the films since made about it. Also, included are new eyewitness accounts the author has obtained and information from Japanese sources that has never been previously published. The lengthy Appendices will include statistical details of the ships, the planes and the men.

REVIEWS

"...meticulous research can not be denied... different research methods Smith employed brought together a great account of the battle. Needless to say, this is a book that I will recommend." World War II Database, 06/2008

"...an impressive volume of wartime history... should make a worthy addition to any naval history library..."US Naval Institute, 06/2008

"...separates reality from the myths...a fascinating read. ...a major contribution to maritime history..."The Northern Mariner, 08/2008

"...the most thorough look at the Midway battle that has ever been done and a book that is a must for any nautical enthusiast."Model Madness, 08/2008.
Price: $34.37 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In recent decades, there has been an explosion of interest in global ethics -- the study of ethical issues with significant global dimensions This book, a companion volume to Global Justice: Seminal Essays, provides a sample of the best recent work on those issues. Topics treated include whether individuals and governments in rich countries should give more aid to people in poor countries, and what the nature of any such duties might be; the causes of persistent poverty in certain countries; the conditions under which military action aimed at protecting human rights in foreign countries might be morally justified; the moral basis for the right to self-determination; whether attitudes such as patriotism and nationalism are morally justified in today's world, and if so, what justifies them; what "development" is; whether there could be a genuinely universal consensus on human rights; and what response might be morally required to such global problems as population growth and climate change..
Price: $20.46 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Alan Turing was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century In 1935, aged 22, he developed the mathematical theory upon which all subsequent stored-program digital computers are modeled.
At the outbreak of hostilities with Germany in September 1939, he joined the Government Codebreaking team at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire and played a crucial role in deciphering Engima, the code used by the German armed forces to protect their radio communications. Turing's work on the version of Enigma used by the German navy was vital to the battle for supremacy in the North Atlantic. He also contributed to the attack on the cyphers known as "Fish," which were used by the German High Command for the encryption of signals during the latter part of the war. His contribution helped to shorten the war in Europe by an estimated two years.
After the war, his theoretical work led to the development of Britain's first computers at the National Physical Laboratory and the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory at Manchester University.
Turing was also a founding father of modern cognitive science, theorizing that the cortex at birth is an "unorganized machine" which through "training" becomes organized "into a universal machine or something like it." He went on to develop the use of computers to model biological growth, launching the discipline now referred to as Artificial Life.
The papers in this book are the key works for understanding Turing's phenomenal contribution across all these fields. The collection includes Turing's declassified wartime "Treatise on the Enigma"; letters from Turing to Churchill and to codebreakers; lectures, papers, and broadcasts which opened up the concept of AI and its implications; and the paper which formed the genesis of the investigation of Artifical Life..
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Control theory, developed in the twentieth century, is the subject of this compilation of 25 annotated reprints of seminal papers representing the evolution of the control field. Carefully assembled by a distinguished editorial board to ensure that each paper contributes to the whole, rather than exist as a separate entity, this is the first book to document the research and accomplishments that have driven the practice of control.

Control Theory: Twenty-Five Seminal Papers (1932-1981) begins with an introduction describing the major developments in control, linking each to a selected paper. Each paper includes a commentary that lends a contemporary spin and places the contributions of each paper and its impact on the field into proper perspective. The material covers the period between 1932 to 1981 and addresses a broad spectrum of topics. The earliest paper is the famous "Regeneration Theory" by Harry Nyquist, which laid the foundation for a frequency-domain approach to stability analysis of linear control systems and introduced the Nyquist criterion. The most recent paper in the volume, "Feedback and Optimal Sensitivity" by George Zames, marked the beginning of the "robustness" era.

This comprehensive volume is a valuable resource for control researchers and engineers worldwide. Also, it will be of great interest to engineers and scientists in related fields, such as communications, signal processing, circuits, power, and applied mathematics..
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This volume brings together articles from The Quarterly Newsletter of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition The selected articles are important benchmarks in the recent history of research and theory on the cultural and contextual foundations of human development. The central theme of this discussion can be posed as a question: How shall we develop a psychology that takes as its starting point the actions of people participating in routine, culturally organized activities? The discussion is organized in terms of a set of overarching themes of importance to psychologists and other social scientists: The nature of context; experiments as contexts; culture-historical theories of culture, context, and development; the analysis of classroom settings as a social important context of development; the psychological analysis of activity in situ; and questions of power and discourse. This text will appeal to graduate students and professionals in psychology, anthropology, education, and child development..
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This series of brief and sparkling philosophical essays explores the Principle of Continuity as it impacts discussions of the Big Bang and the expansion of the universe, God, infinity, biological immortality and evolution.

From Ancient Greece to the frontiers of modern science, some egregious blunders have been made in both philosophy and in theoretical physics. The old theory of Continuous Creation was blown up by the Big Bang theory, but the author shows that this is just another ontological quagmire that conflicts with the First Law of Thermodynamics (conservation) and common sense. Surveying scientific principles, he discerns where they can and cannot illuminate our understanding.

These philosophical essays draw their logic from the principle of continuity. Simply stated, the principle of continuity consists of three axioms: (a) Nothing cannot become something; (b) Something cannot become nothing; (c) Something cannot become something else. When applied to new conceptions of the universe (or everyday life), the principle of continuity will expose hokum or honest error.

Big Bang theory is honest error, not glib sloganeering. But when put to the test of continuity Big Bang theory fails (nothing cannot become something). The universe cannot be created nor can it be destroyed. Stephen Hawking, co-father of Big Bang theory, recently recanted, stating that the origin of the universe is a subject for disciplines other than science .

The absolute existence of the universe implies the absolute existence of every particle of matter and energy, which leads to the conclusion that we are made of immortal stuff. It also leads to the tantalizing idea that evolution in its agonizingly slow way could be said to be building an immortal organism.

While several articles have been published on the discovery of telomeres and the role of telomerase in aging, these essays present a unique philosophical system which posits that existence is absolute and that biological immortality is the evolutionary goal of all living.

Drawing on sources ranging from the Holy Bible to Charles Darwin and scientific studies of recombinant DNA, the essays, written in a folksy style, conclude that the universe could not have been created even as they show that the universe, or any part of it, cannot be destroyed. This absolute existence of the universe and its contents puts meaning back into theories of existence by finding that everything obeys a simple law: to be continuous. This compulsion fuels the quest for immortality which is expressed in our religions, in science, in the value we give to life and to reproduction, and to the preservation of family, tribe, and nation.

The evidence that death seems to contradict our passion for immortality is based on the delusion that there must be a beginning and an end to everything. In any event the point is moot because, thanks to a handful of cell biologists, science has discovered the secret of death and its cure..
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The Well was conceived during the Orwellian year of 1984, yet instead of heralding Big Brother, it became a boundary-breaking cultural invention that helped change our world. Though few glimpsed its potential, it quickly became indispensable to the evolution of the Internet as we know it today. Its creators were Larry Brilliant, a visionary software engineer and philanthropic doctor, and Stewart Brand, Sixties legend and originator of The Whole Earth Catalog. They imagined a new kind of community, one whose members would meet in everyday space, as ideal communities always have, while also inhabiting a new kind of environment, the virtual ether of a world that hadn't even yet been named. By the end of the 1980s, the pioneering community founded by Brilliant and Brand was attracting thousands of early adopters, from former commune-dwellers to students to technologists to businesspeople to fans of the Grateful Dead, all participating in online conferences with other Well-beings (as they called themselves) on myriad topics. This fascinating anecdotal history unfolds their story. It is filled with memorable personalities and their early electronic postings, which are quoted as they were originally transmitted, as it analyzes the many reasons for the Well's legendary success, from its beginnings less than two decades ago up to the present day, including its recent purchase by salon.com..
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This collection is based on the notion that the future of bioethics is inseparable from its past. Seminal works provide a unique and relatively unexplored vehicle for investigating not only where bioethics began, but where it may be going as well. In this volume, a number of the pioneers in bioethics - Tom Beauchamp, Lisa Sowle Cahill, James Childress, Charles E. Curran, Patricia King, H. Tristram Engelhardt, William F. May, Edmund D. Pellegrino, Warren Reich, Robert Veatch and LeRoy Walters - reflect on their early work and how they fit into the past and future of bioethics. Coming from many disciplines, generations, and perspectives, these authors provide a broad overview of the history and current state of the field. It should be valuable to anyone with a serious interest in the development and future of bioethics, at a time when new paths into medical questions are made almost daily..
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