Development of British Naval Thinking: Essays in Memory of Bryan Ranft
Author: Geoffrey Till
In this book, Britain's leading naval historians and analysts have come together to produce an investigation of the development of British naval thinking over the last three centuries, from the sailing ship era to the current day. It will describe the beginnings of formalised thought about the conduct of naval operations in the eighteenth century, its transformation through the impact of industrialisation in the nineteenth century and its application in the two world wars of the twentieth. The book concludes with a review of modern British naval thinking and the appearance of naval doctrine against the uncertainties of the loss of empire, the Cold War, nuclear weapons and the huge changes facing us as we move in to the new millennium. How perceptive and distinctive was British naval thinking? Where did British ideas come from? Did they determine or merely follow British experience? Do they explain British naval success? The contributors to this volume will try to answer all such questions in a book that should be of considerable interest to the maritime community around the English-speaking world.
Table of Contents:
List of Contributors xiForeword Sir Julian Oswald, GCB xiii
Acknowledgements xvi
Introduction: British naval thinking: a contradiction in terms? Geoffrey Till 1
The idea of naval strategy in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries N.A.M. Rodger 19
The development of education in the Royal Navy: 1854-1914 Andrew Lambert 34
Corbett and the emergence of a British school? Geoffrey Till 60
1914-18: the proof of the pudding Andrew Gordon 89
Richmond and the faith reaffirmed: British naval thinking between the wars Geoffrey Till 103
All sorts of wars: British naval thinking and technology in the Second World War Jock Gardner 134
British naval thinking in the nuclear age Richard Hill 160
The discovery of doctrine: British naval thinking at the close of the twentieth century Eric Grove 182
Epilogue: Professor Bryan McLaren Ranft Geoffrey Till 192
Bibliography 195
Index 208
Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America
Author: Dudley Clendinen
This is the definitive account of the last great struggle for equal rights in the twentieth century. From the birth of the modern gay rights movement in 1969, at the Stonewall riots in New York, through 1988, when the gay rights movement was eclipsed by the more urgent demands of AIDS activists, this is the remarkable and until now untold story of how a largely invisible population of men and women banded together to create their place in America's culture and government. Told through the voices of gay activists and their opponents, filled with dozens of colorful characters, Out for Good traces the emergence of gay rights movements in cities across the country and their transformation into a national force that changed the face of America forever.
Out for Good is the unforgettable chronicle of an important -- and nearly lost -- chapter in American history.
New York Times Book Review - David Garrow
[A] rich and valuable book....nicely captures the optimism that followed the enactment of gay rights ordinances in [several] cities in the 1970s....[C]onsistently, Out for Good portrays gay activists as their own worst enemies, with political advancement reapeatedly thwarted by unnecessarily ugly intramural politics.
Library Journal
Two New York Times reporters on the struggle for equal rights.
The New York Times Book Review - David J. Garrow
...[A] rich and valuable book....nicely captures the optimism that followed the enactment of gay rights ordinances in [several] cities in the 1970s....[C]onsistently, Out for Good portrays gay activists as their own worst enemies, with political advancement reapeatedly thwarted by unnecessarily ugly intramural politics.
USA Today - Foster
[A]n extraordinarily revealing history...Clendinen and Nagourney artfully chart the dynamic oscillation of shanging cultural and political attitudes about gay life, in which even modest victories sometimes precede devastating reactions...[The Authors] have accomplished a great deal in Out for Good. It's a riveting history that strikes at the heart of a perplexing story about the persistence of bigotry— and a 30-year effort, so far, to vanquish it.
Kirkus Reviews
Embedded within this heavily detailed chronicle of the American gay rights movement(s) between 1969 and 1992 are openings of bright clarity onto the complex, sometimes self-divided evolution of gay and lesbian activism. Clendinen and Nagourney, both New York Times journalists, chose their subtitle well: Their book focuses on such political (not social-service or cultural) organizations and their leaders as the Gay Liberation Front, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. However, the authors' claim for their book, that it uniquely recounts the history of gay activism since 1969, is dated, in view of John Loughery's Other Side of Silence (1998), which includes within its more intellectually nuanced history of gay male identity some of the political developments described here (such as the Supreme Court case of Bowers v. Harwick, upholding state laws against "sodomy," and the countervailing passage of gay rights bills). What Clendinen and Nagourney additionally incorporate are: attention to lesbian activism and to such sometimes forgotten midwestern cities as Chicago and Minneapolis; pivotal moments in the rise of gay political consciousness, such as the first national gay fund-raising campaign (to help arson victims in New Orleans, 1973); and the dialectics of political success and failure (Anita Bryant's antigay rhetoric in Florida energized gay activism nationally). Though the lengthy documentation of personal politics within the organizations discussed is wearing, it contextualizes the tensions the authors expose, with impartial sympathy, between gay men and lesbians, blacks and whites, and conservatives and radicals withinthe gay rights movements—oppositions that do not often receive, as they do here, the candid discussion they deserve. In that regard, the chapter on Jesse Jackson's ambivalent speech to the Human Rights Campaign Fund in 1983 is a highlight. Readers who can navigate the journalistic density of sometimes anecdotal fact and quotation will be rewarded with a richer sense of recent gay history.
