Books by "Michael D. Gordin"
6 books found
For more than 30 years Jenkins has been advising the military, government, and prestigious think tanks on the dangers of nuclear proliferation. Now he goes beyond what the experts know to examine how terrorists themselves think about such weapons.
Presents a guide to the issues of weapons of mass destruction, including definitions, primary sources, case studies, research tools, organizations, and notable persons.
Rockets and Revolution offers a multifaceted study of the race toward space in the first half of the twentieth century, examining how the Russian, European, and American pioneers competed against one another in the early years to acquire the fundamentals of rocket science, engineer simple rockets, and ultimately prepare the path for human spaceflight. Between 1903 and 1953, Russia matured in radical and dramatic ways as the tensions and expectations of the Russian revolution drew it both westward and spaceward. European and American industrial capacities became the models to imitate and to surpass. The burden was always on Soviet Russia to catch up—enough to achieve a number of remarkable “firsts” in these years, from the first national rocket society to the first comprehensive surveys of spaceflight. Russia rose to the challenges of its Western rivals time and again, transcending the arenas of science and technology and adapting rocket science to popular culture, science fiction, political ideology, and military programs. While that race seemed well on its way to achieving the goal of space travel and exploring life on other planets, during the second half of the twentieth century these scientific advances turned back on humankind with the development of the intercontinental ballistic missile and the coming of the Cold War. Purchase the audio edition.
One-on-One Tutoring by Humans and Computers articulates the CIRCSIM-Tutor project, an attempt to develop a computer tutor that generates a natural language dialogue with a student. Editors Martha Evens and Joel Michael present the educational context within which the project was launched, as well as research into tutoring, the process of implementation of CIRCSIM-Tutor, and the results of using CIRCSIM-Tutor in the classroom. The domain of this project is cardiovascular physiology, specifically targeting first-year medical students, though the idea is applicable to the development of intelligent tutoring systems across populations, disciplines, and domains. This 5 year-long project was motivated by the belief that students need assistance in building appropriate mental models of complex physiological phenomena, as well as practice in expressing these ideas in their own words to fully develop those models, and experience in problem-solving to use those models effectively. The book outlines directions for future research, and includes distinct features such as: *detailed studies of human one-on-one tutoring; *learning outcomes resulting from use of the tutor; *natural language input parsed and translated into logical form; and *natural language output generated using the LFG paradigm. This volume will appeal to educators who want to improve human tutoring or use computer tutors in the classroom, and it will interest computer scientists who want to build those computer tutors, as well as anyone who believes that language is central to teaching and learning.
Uncovering the role of literature, late imperialism, and the rise of new models of internationalism as integral to the invention of Global English, this book focuses on three key figures from the “Vocabulary Control Movement” - C.K. Ogden, Harold Palmer, and Michael West - who competed for market share for their respective language teaching systems - Basic English, the Palmer Method, and the New Method - through battles over word lists and teaching methods in the 1920s and 30s. Drawing on archives from the Carnegie Corporation and considering language teaching in eight global sites, this book analyzes how a series of conferences in New York and London resolved their conflicts and produced a consolidated, international standard form of English. As a postcolonial approach to the development of the field of English Language Teaching, it reveals how these language debates were proxy battles over an idealized global subject: an urban, secular, consumer moving seamlessly between the tribal and global, speaking both mother tongues and an international lingua franca, Global English. Featuring analysis of the primary texts of each of the three key figures in this book as well as close readings of their readers, which featured adaptations of well-known literary texts from writers like Poe, Dickens, Wordsworth, Milton and Wells, it recovers a neglected history of English as it was redefined as an international language through anti-colonial resistance in the peripheries and transatlantic power struggles in the metropole during the interwar period.
Why do ordinary people turn to psychology in the hopes of making themselves healthier, wealthier, and happier? Governed by Affect offers a multi-sited history of psychology and its role in American public life. Focusing on a series of transformations since the 1970s, the book examines the rise of psychology as a health science and the discipline's growing entanglements with public policy inspired new theories of inattentive and unconscious affect, which have come to structure health care, education, the economy, and how we understand ourselves.