America's Political Inventors

by George W. Liebmann

2017 · Bloomsbury Publishing

Recent American political developments, including the election of Donald Trump, reveal profound disquiet with the highly centralized political regime based on discretionary allocation of funds and powers to interest groups that has developed since the creation of emergency institutions after America's entry into World War I. This book demonstrates the effectiveness in American history of measures conceived in a different spirit, addressing the population at large, rather than particular interest groups, relying on citizen and local initiative, and founded not on the distribution of frequently unearned benefits and powers but on reciprocal contributions and obligations. George W. Liebmann discusses John Winthrop and his foundation of New England towns; John Locke and the creation of Southern plantations; Thomas Jefferson and his scheme for the organization of Northwestern townships and American territories and states; Joseph Pulitzer and the origins of municipal home rule; John Wesley Powell and the creation of reclamation districts; Hugh Hammond Bennett and the fostering of soil conservation districts; and Byron Hanke and the development of residential community associations. The book concludes with a number of public policy proposals relating to housing, urban renewal, care of the elderly, immigration and youth unemployment conceived in the same spirit. Liebmann brings to light little-known facts concerning the growth of practices and institutions that Americans take for granted. His book will be of interest to students of biography, history and government.

Two Millennia of Mathematics

by George M. Phillips

2012 · Springer Science & Business Media

This book is intended for those who love mathematics, including under graduate students of mathematics, more experienced students, and the vast number of amateurs, in the literal sense of those who do something for the love of it. I hope it will also be a useful source of material for those who teach mathematics. It is a collection of loosely connected topics in areas of mathematics that particularly interest me, ranging over the two millennia from the work of Archimedes, who died in the year 212 Be, to the Werke of Gauss, who was born in 1777, although there are some references outside this period. In view of its title, I must emphasize that this book is certainly not pretending to be a comprehensive history of the mathematics of this period, or even a complete account of the topics discussed. However, every chapter is written with the history of its topic in mind. It is fascinating, for example, to follow how both Napier and Briggs constructed their log arithms before many of the most relevant mathematical ideas had been discovered. Do I really mean "discovered"? There is an old question, "Is mathematics created or discovered?" Sometimes it seems a shame not to use the word "create" in praise of the first mathematician to write down some outstanding result. Yet the inner harmony that sings out from the best of mathematics seems to demand the word "discover.