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Published by EH.NET (September 2000)
Andrew Gibson and Arthur Donovan, The Abandoned Ocean: A History of United States Maritime Policy. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2000. xiv + 362 pp. $39.95 (hardback), ISBN: 1-57003-319-6.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Gordon Boyce, School of Economics and Finance, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
In this well-written volume, Gibson and Donovan provide a concise analysis of American maritime policy from the early republic to the present. Their aim is to explain why since about 1860 the United States failed to achieve "its stated goal of promoting a commercially viable merchant marine engaged in foreign trade" even though a strong merchant navy was considered essential in times of national emergency. In so doing, Gibson and Donovan endeavour to furnish the historical background needed to guide future policy. Their advice is unequivocal: the government should eliminate restrictions and subsidies in order to let the industry operate freely on the same basis as its international rivals.
Yet, the argument does not come across as ideologically motivated or doctrinaire. Indeed, Gibson and Donovan carefully explain that America made a critical mistake by continuing to pursue protectionist practices. Specifically, the authorities required U.S. flagged vessels to be U.S.-owned and -built and reserved coastal trades for U.S. registered ships. Between 1830 and 1860, when America had an international comparative advantage in shipbuilding and formidable ship operating capabilities, these restrictions were unnecessary. After the Civil War, which caused the destruction of a large part of the national fleet, American shipbuilding lost its prowess as the shift from sail to steam and from wood to iron and later steel conferred advantages upon Britain's shipyards. Yet, U.S. flag restrictions compelled domestic operators to remain bound to an inefficient shipbuilding industry. The chosen solution was to provide subsidies, but these were inadequate to prevent a continued decline, especially as land ward opportunities offered greater returns. After 1880, the U.S. navy expanded as the country sought to enhance its international position, but the merchant marine withered to the extent that by 1900, American ships carried just eight percent of their country's foreign trade. During World War I, the consequences of this dangerous state of affairs finally revealed themselves, and the government responded by building and operating a huge fleet. It also passed the famous Shipping Act of 1916 which ignored international practices and compelled domestic and foreign ship owners servicing U.S. trades to operate within "open" conferences (rate-setting cartel-like organizations) that were subject to federal regulation.
America's policy settings were reinforced by subsequent legislation, which offered the industry more support in the form of postal, construction, and operating subsidies. The Shipping Act of 1920 committed the government to preserving a merchant marine capable of supporting the nation's trade and acting as a naval reserve and the Act of 1936 compelled ship operators to offer seafarers remuneration at levels above international standards. A divided union movement created chronically unstable labour relations to which ship owners responded by making generous concessions. Moreover, because the U.S. shipbuilding industry failed to exploit fully innovations (including modular construction) vessel costs were much higher than overseas. Subsidies, which were especially wasteful and corrupt in the 1930s, propped up the edifice. Political leaders were unwilling to make fundamental changes in the face of opposition from politically powerful interest groups. The fire sales of vessels that followed massive war-induced shipbuilding programmes gave the industry temporary fillips that could not compensate in the long-term for a lack of international comparative advantage.
By the 1980s, the link between commercial shipping and military support had been all but broken by changes in sealift requirements. (The army required Roll-on Roll-off vessels to carry heavy vehicles, but U.S. shipowners possessed few of these craft with the result that the world had a very close call when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.) Moreover, subsidies were becoming increasingly politically unpalatable. Currently, U.S. policies are completely out of touch with international conventions that allow the use of flags of convenience and support open registers.
Gibson and Donovan argue that the solution is to leave shipping free to meet foreign competition. By eliminating onerous registry rules and allowing American ship owners to buy vessels from foreign yards, to employ lower cost labour, and permit the same type of tax advantages enjoyed by international competitors, the U.S. might prevent the complete disappearance of its merchant marine. In so doing, the nation could preserve the industry's formidable innovative capabilities, while securing commercial and perhaps strategic advantages.
The Abandoned Ocean is not a typical "policy" book; it is written in a lively and compelling style, provides a broad context, and presents a clear analysis. This splendid volume will attract government officials, business historians, maritime historians, and economists. By highlighting the difficulty of regulating an international industry this volume indirectly offers guidance to those who might consider imposing restrictions on businesses like those conducted over the internet. It also draws attention to the way in which political factors that shape regulatory traditions can create enduring path dependency. The chapters on recent developments are particularly valuable. The Abandoned Ocean should be included in the reading lists of a variety of courses, including the economics of regulation, policy formulation and execution, and business and maritime history, as well. Individual chapters can be used as required reading for historical survey courses to develop maritime/international themes. Maritime historians will be anxious to see Gibson and Donovan's next work which examines the history of the container revolution.
Gordon Boyce's publications include Information, Mediation and Institutional Development: The Rise of Large-scale Enterprise in British Shipping, 1879-1914, Manchester University Press, 1995.
Citation: Gordon Boyce, "Review of Andrew Gibson and Arthur Donovan The Abandoned Ocean: A History of United States Maritime Policy" Economic History Services, September 11, 2000
Starting from our earliest days as a nation the authors trace the world shipping history and how America fit in to global sceene. The book makes connections as to our past and how it became our present.
The book reads very well, is concise and fills in gaps in the details of our history that many scholors (layman or profession) should read and evaluate. It just makes sense to see the total picture painted by Gibson and Donovan.
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This book is the only thing ever coming close to an autobiography that Einstein ever wrote. Needless to say, offers of money and prizes were offered to him, unlike the millions offered to ex-U.S. presidents to write a book. He never accepted any of these offers. The only offer he accepted was from Professor Schilpp to write an intellectual autobiography of himself.
Incredible and Timeless is only ways to describe this book. Einstein labels as his "obituary", for a man who was considered the "Person of the Century" by Time Magazine.
Friends, his own "obituary" in his own hand is a worthy read and cost of the book. It is not a "personal" life but his "thinking" on science and of course on physics. We all know the two great theories of physical was created in the early 20th. century: the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. Einstein alone created relativity and was also one of the founders of the quantum theory. We also know now that Einstein never accepted quantum theory till the end.
Here, Einstein fully describes the failure of classical mechanics and the rise of the electromagnetic field, the theory of relativity and of the quanta.
Of note, Einstein's "Evolution of Physics" is a general lay discussion of the same issues. This is Einstein's technical discussion of the evolution of physics.
"When I was a fairly precocious young man the nothingness of the hopes and strivings which chases most men restlessly through life came to my consciousness with considerable vitality" This comment alone is worth price of the book.
The essays sections includes writing of the great scientist of the 20th century. We only read about them in textbook but here they are in their own words: Niels Bohr, Louis De Broglie, Arnold Sommerfeld, Max Born, Kurt Godel, Hans Reichenbach and Wolfgang Pauli. One only sees their picture in physics textbooks.
This book really belongs in all who are professional scientists or are interested in science. Unlike Newton "Principia" or Darwin's "The Origin of Species" Einstein papers are scattered everyone. This is the only definitive book on Einstein by Einstein himself.
Moreover, it is a scholarly and scientific book, so it should last for a long time and of value to all future generations.
--Lonnie R. Gardner (Math Teacher)
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I have bought as many books as I could find for my son who is eleven and loves reading about Jupiter, Bob and Pete's adventures. We look in every secondhand shop we can find and are slowly getting the entire series.
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Whatever the spell, subconscious or spooky, I'm glad I did. This was a book that started out good and only got better; read it practically overnight. In the end, it was Arthur Flowers' vibrant storytelling, so warm and alive with understanding of human frailty and fullness of spirit--like a downhome, latter-day incarnation of the oldtime poet who said, "I am human, therefore nothing human is alien to me"--that spoke to me, made me smile and ache and glow.
"I am hoodoo, I am griot, I am a man of power," he trumpets at the opening in a verbal fanfare, a narrative device echoing and acknowledging ancient oral tradition; there is power in the word and magic in the story. "My story is a true story, my words are true words, my lie is a true lie--a fine old delta tale about a mad blues piano player and a Arkansas conjure woman on a hoodoo mission.... Plan to show you how they found the good thing. True love. That once-in-a-lifetime love.... because when you find true love my friend its strictly do or die."
Set in the Mississippi River delta country in and around Memphis, Tennessee, at the dawn of the Jazz Age, ANOTHER GOOD LOVING BLUES tracks the sweet & sour course of the relationship between bluesman Luke Bodeen--peacock proud, stylish and sure--and alluring, stiff-necked hoodoo woman Melvira Dupree, who's haunted by her past and future. Yet other rivers run through it: memories of arcane gods and religious rites variously practiced by descendants of African slaves throughout the Americas; the trickle, then stream, of Southern blacks fleeing impoverished indenture in the fields for the promise of Northern urban opportunity post-World War I. Race-conscious workingclass intellectuals gather with college-trained professionals to debate Garvey vs. Dubois, the church vs. traditional African religion. The periodic floods of "The Great Muddy," the mighty Mississippi itself, become legend in song and story.
It's territory that Zora Neale Hurston (who makes a "guest appearance," as does W. C. Handy) plumbed and celebrated, and more recently Ishmael Reed: the nexus of history and folklore, literal and visceral, sanctified and streetwise.
But, aah, the core of the story, that man-woman thing! Heart of the blues. "You don't know what love is until you know the meaning of the blues," goes the famous song. Flowers, a veteran bluesman himself, is especially deft, and searingly compassionate, showing "how to go down like a natural man" after Luke breaks off with Melvira:
"Lucas Bodeen let the music say all the things he wanted to say to her. O baby, I love you so. I don't understand why or nothing, I just love you. Lucas Bodeen played his heart out, another man hurting cause my baby's gone and o the loving sure was good blues.
"O God baby, how could you really leave me?
"Tears.
"...After awhile the music start getting good to him, and ol Bodeen, he forgot all about how bad he felt. Got into the music, made that piano stand up and do tricks. No matter how much trouble you got in mind, the blues tend to remind you that the sun is going to shine in your back door someday. For all the pain it cost him, he had to say he was glad she had come into his life. Don't do for a man to live and die without having known at least one great love in his life. He would have hated to have died without having ever felt like she made him feel."
Flowers, besides his talent, experience and skill, obviously has considerable affection for all his characters; all the people of this book live and breathe. What's more, he tells a plethora of stories and all of them involve you. And his triumphant narrative voice is the finest, most lyrical and comprehensible use of Southern black vernacular I've ever read. I love this book: It's a work of enormous heart, healing and redemption. Told plain and simple, touching and to the point. ("Literature and hoodoo," says one character, "both are tools for shaping the soul." "Spiritwork," says another. "Sacred literature... Rootwork.") Let this nexus of love, blues and hoodoo work its magic on you.
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Nevertheless, Arthur Rex, while sticking to the traditional Arthurian material about 90%, manages to put just enough twist and spin on the stories to make them Berger's own. It is funny, satiric, bitter, realisitic, and even romantic. Berger manages to make it a peculiarly modern story. Everyone seems to feel trapped in roles they don't want to, or aren't suited to, play but feel that they must. At the end, before leaving for Armaggedon and his fate, Arthur meets with Guinnivere one last time, a meeting that earns its special poignancy from the cumulative effect of what has gone before. The heartfelt ending is hardearned. Guinnivere is bitter, and angry even, feels that she has been used, by Arthur, Lancelot, yes, but mostly by nature and God. Arthur realizes that she would probably been a better king than he. It is Arthur's response to Guinnivere and to his predicament which gives his tragedy its special feel. I don't know of a better telling of the Arthur story. However, be aware that Berger assumes mastery and ownership of the story through an act of adverse possession as audacious and complete as, say, Ezra Pound's in his translation of the Chinese poetry. This is not just a translation; it is a focused re-interpretation.
Berger's body of work is second to none in American Literature. Big statement, I know. Even his minor novels are original in perspective and sensibility. He deserves to be rescued with all haste and speed from the obscurity that seems about to be unfairly thrust upon him. It is a shame that his books are all going out of print. Read this book, The Little Big Man, the Reinhart saga (the masterpiece here is Reinhart in Love), Sneaky People, and Killing Time for starters. You will not regret it.
Out of print? What a shame.
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The end
Or, in the case of the popular Arthur books, aardvarks just like them. Arthur's New Puppy is the eighteenth book in the best-selling series. It follows the misadventures of the lovable aardvark as he attempts to housebreak his bouncy puppy Pal.
Children seem to identify with Arthur as he struggles with everyday problems with the help of his loving parents (and no help from his pesky little sister, D.W.) and friends.
If you have an Arthur fan in the house, or if you have a new puppy in the house, you'll want to check out this book.
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"The Act of Creation" offers a theory to account for the "Ah Ha" reaction of scientific discovery, the "Ha Ha" reaction to jokes and the "Ah" reaction of mystical or religious insight. In each case the result is produced by a "bisociation of matrices" or the intersection of lines of thought which brings together hitherto unconnected ideas and fuses them into a creative synthesis. When the lines of thought are scientic the result is a scientific discovery, when they are concerned with devotional matters the result is mystical insight and when they are on a more homely plane the result can be a joke.
The model is fleshed out with a great deal of information ranging from the religions of the world to a theory about the nervous system to account for the build-up of tension and its discharge at the puchline of a joke. Peter Medawar's review was scathing in his comments on Koestler's science, which is a shame because the book can have the desirable effect of encouraging young scientists to read far beyond the usual range of their literature.
Clarke forms a world in the very distant future whose inhabitants live for hundreds of years on a ravaged planet earth in the oasis of the city. The city is an incredibly advanced utopia but an island of machines and somewhat bored inhabitants.
The main protaganist is the youngest member of the community who ventures out into a voyage of discovery and onto another community which has also survived the ravages of time. The reuniting of the two tribes of mankind each a distinct culture at opposite ends of the spectrum is problem and goal of "Against the Fall of Night".
This is science fiction storytelling at its best. A great story and a must have for all fans of the genre.
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The circus is in town-everybody's excited to go, but when Arthur is sick with chicken pox, D.W. comes home from play group to find Arthur lying on the couch so wishes she was sick so pretends to think Arthur is just pretending to be sick. And as the story continues, D.W. shows how she wishes she was the sick one-and in the end, Arthur is better, but D.W. gets the chicken pox.
This will be a great book to teach about being careful what you wish for even when chicken pox no longer exists.
Reviewed by Gordon Boyce, School of Economics and Finance, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand . Published by EH.Net (September, 2000)
In this well-written volume, Gibson and Donovan provide a concise analysis of American maritime policy from the early republic to the present. Their aim is to explain why since about 1860 the United States failed to achieve "its stated goal of promoting a commercially viable merchant marine engaged in foreign trade" even though a strong merchant navy was considered essential in times of national emergency. In so doing, Gibson and Donovan endeavour to furnish the historical background needed to guide future policy. Their advice is unequivocal: the government should eliminate restrictions and subsidies in order to let the industry operate freely on the same basis as its international rivals.
Yet, the argument does not come across as ideologically motivated or doctrinaire. Indeed, Gibson and Donovan carefully explain that America made a critical mistake by continuing to pursue protectionist practices. Specifically, the authorities required U.S. flagged vessels to be U.S.-owned and -built and reserved coastal trades for U.S. registered ships. Between 1830 and 1860, when America had an international comparative advantage in shipbuilding and formidable ship operating capabilities, these restrictions were unnecessary. After the Civil War, which caused the destruction of a large part of the national fleet, American shipbuilding lost its prowess as the shift from sail to steam and from wood to iron and later steel conferred advantages upon Britain's shipyards. Yet, U.S. flag restrictions compelled domestic operators to remain bound to an inefficient shipbuilding industry. The chosen solution was to provide subsidies, but these were inadequate to prevent a continued decline, especially as land ward opportunities offered greater returns. After 1880, the U.S. navy expanded as the country sought to enhance its international position, but the merchant marine withered to the extent that by 1900, American ships carried just eight percent of their country's foreign trade. During World War I, the consequences of this dangerous state of affairs finally revealed themselves, and the government responded by building and operating a huge fleet. It also passed the famous Shipping Act of 1916 which ignored international practices and compelled domestic and foreign ship owners servicing U.S. trades to operate within "open" conferences (rate-setting cartel-like organizations) that were subject to federal regulation.
America's policy settings were reinforced by subsequent legislation, which offered the industry more support in the form of postal, construction, and operating subsidies. The Shipping Act of 1920 committed the government to preserving a merchant marine capable of supporting the nation's trade and acting as a naval reserve and the Act of 1936 compelled ship operators to offer seafarers remuneration at levels above international standards. A divided union movement created chronically unstable labour relations to which ship owners responded by making generous concessions. Moreover, because the U.S. shipbuilding industry failed to exploit fully innovations (including modular construction) vessel costs were much higher than overseas. Subsidies, which were especially wasteful and corrupt in the 1930s, propped up the edifice. Political leaders were unwilling to make fundamental changes in the face of opposition from politically powerful interest groups. The fire sales of vessels that followed massive war-induced shipbuilding programmes gave the industry temporary fillips that could not compensate in the long-term for a lack of international comparative advantage.
By the 1980s, the link between commercial shipping and military support had been all but broken by changes in sealift requirements. (The army required Roll-on Roll-off vessels to carry heavy vehicles, but U.S. shipowners possessed few of these craft with the result that the world had a very close call when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.) Moreover, subsidies were becoming increasingly politically unpalatable. Currently, U.S. policies are completely out of touch with international conventions that allow the use of flags of convenience and support open registers.
Gibson and Donovan argue that the solution is to leave shipping free to meet foreign competition. By eliminating onerous registry rules and allowing American ship owners to buy vessels from foreign yards, to employ lower cost labour, and permit the same type of tax advantages enjoyed by international competitors, the U.S. might prevent the complete disappearance of its merchant marine. In so doing, the nation could preserve the industry's formidable innovative capabilities, while securing commercial and perhaps strategic advantages.
The Abandoned Ocean is not a typical "policy" book; it is written in a lively and compelling style, provides a broad context, and presents a clear analysis. This splendid volume will attract government officials, business historians, maritime historians, and economists. By highlighting the difficulty of regulating an international industry this volume indirectly offers guidance to those who might consider imposing restrictions on businesses like those conducted over the internet. It also draws attention to the way in which political factors that shape regulatory traditions can create enduring path dependency. The chapters on recent developments are particularly valuable. The Abandoned Ocean should be included in the reading lists of a variety of courses, including the economics of regulation, policy formulation and execution, and business and maritime history, as well. Individual chapters can be used as required reading for historical survey courses to develop maritime/international themes. Maritime historians will be anxious to see Gibson and Donovan's next work which examines the history of the container revolution.
Library of Congress call number: VK23 .G53 1999 Subjects: Merchant marine--United States--History Navigation--United States--History Citation: Gordon Boyce . "Review of Andrew Gibson and Arthur Donovan, The Abandoned Ocean: A History of United States Maritime Policy," EH.Net, H-Net Reviews, September, 2000. URL....