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Arming the Nation for War
A decorated World War I veteran, Federal Judge Robert P.
Patterson knew all too well the needs of soldiers on the
battlefield. He was thus dismayed by America’s lack of
military preparedness when a second great war engulfed Europe in
1939–40. With the international crisis worsening, Patterson
even resumed military training—as a forty-nine-year-old
private—before being named assistant secretary of war in
July 1940. That appointment set the stage for Patterson’s
central role in the country’s massive mobilization and
supply effort, which helped the Allies win World War II. In
Arming the Nation for War , a previously unpublished
account long buried among the late author’s papers and
originally marked confidential, Patterson describes the vast
challenges the United States faced as it had to equip, in a
desperately short time, a fighting force capable of confronting a
formidable enemy. Brimming with data and detail, the book also
abounds with deep insights into the myriad problems encountered
on the domestic mobilization front—including the sometimes
divergent interests of wartime planners and industrial
leaders—along with the logistical difficulties of supplying
far-flung theaters of war with everything from ships, planes, and
tanks to food and medicine. Determined to remind his
contemporaries of how narrow the Allied margin of victory was and
that the war’s lessons not be forgotten, Patterson clearly
intended the manuscript (which he wrote between 1945 and
’47, when he was President Truman’s secretary of war)
to contribute to the postwar debates on the future of the
military establishment. The fact that passage of the National
Security Act of 1947, to which Patterson was a key contributor,
answered many of his concerns may explain why he never published
the book during his lifetime. A unique document offering an
insider’s view of a watershed historical moment,
Patterson’s text is complemented by editor Brian
Waddell’s extensive introduction and notes. In addition,
Robert M. Morgenthau, former Manhattan district attorney and a
protégé of Patterson’s for four years prior to
the latter’s death in a 1952 plane crash, offers a
heartfelt remembrance of a man the
New York Herald-Tribune called “an example of the
public-spirited citizen.”
eBook
Hong Kong in Transition
Hong Kong in Transition offers a perspective on the exceptional constitutional and administrative experiment that has been taking place in Hong Kong, based on a substantial period under Chinese rule. There have been both successes and failures, and a perceptible process of change which is important to document.The particular appeal of this volume lies in the fact that it combines a broad overview with detailed study of individual topics. It is multidisciplinary, and its chapters may be read as 'stand-alone' studies or taken as complementary parts of a whole snapshot of Hong Kong in this critical early period. The chapters are pitched at a level to make them accessible both to undergraduates and to the specialist. Contributors have been drawn from Hong Kong, Macau, the UK, the US, Australia and Germany, reflecting the international interest in the fate of Hong Kong.
eBook