Soldiers of Reason

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Ebook in EPUB format. Available for immediate download after we receive your order

DRM:
Watermark

Publication Year:
2009

ISBN-13: 9780156035125

<DIV><B>An &ldquo;entertaining and fast-paced&rdquo; account of the organization that defines the military-industrial complex&mdash;and continues to shape our world today (<I>The New York Times Book Review</I>).</B><BR /><BR /> The RAND Corporation was born in the wake of World War II as a think tank to generate research and analysis for the United States military. It was a magnet for the best and the brightest&mdash;and also the most dangerous.<BR /> &#160;<BR /> RAND quickly became the creator of America&rsquo;s anti-Soviet nuclear strategy, attracting such Cold War luminaries as Albert Wohlstetter, Bernard Brodie, and Herman Kahn, who arguably saved us from nuclear annihilation&mdash;and unquestionably created the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned against.<BR /> &#160;<BR /> In the Kennedy era, RAND analysts and their theories of rational warfare steered our conduct in Vietnam. Those same theories drove our invasion of Iraq forty-five years later, championed by RAND affiliated actors such as Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and Zalmay Khalilzad.<BR /> &#160;<BR /> But RAND&rsquo;s greatest contribution might be its least known: rational choice theory, a model explaining all human behavior through self-interest. Through it RAND sparked the Reagan-led transformation of our social and economic system, but also unleashed a resurgence of precisely the forces whose existence it denied: religion, patriotism, tribalism.<BR /> &#160;<BR /> With <I>Soldiers of Reason</I>, Alex Abella shares a &ldquo;well-researched&rdquo; history of America&rsquo;s last half century that casts a new light on our problematic present (<I>San Francisco Chronicle</I>).</DIV>