Napalm, incendiary gel that sticks to skin and burns to the bone, came into the world on Valentine’s Day 1942 at a secret Harvard war research laboratory. On March 9, 1945, it created an inferno that killed over 87,500 people in Tokyo—more than died in the atomic explosions at Hiroshima or Nagasaki. It went on to incinerate sixty-four of Japan’s largest cities. The Bomb got the press, but napalm did the work.

After World War II, the incendiary held the line against communism in Greece and Korea—Napalm Day led the 1950 counter-attack from Inchon—and fought elsewhere under many flags. Americans generally applauded, until the Vietnam War. Today, napalm lives on as a pariah: a symbol of American cruelty and the misguided use of power, according to anti-war protesters in the 1960s and popular culture from Apocalypse Now to the punk band Napalm Death and British street artist Banksy. Its use by Serbia in 1994 and by the United States in Iraq in 2003 drew condemnation. United Nations delegates judged deployment against concentrations of civilians a war crime in 1980. After thirty-one years, America joined the global consensus, in 2011.

Robert Neer has written the first history of napalm, from its inaugural test on the Harvard College soccer field, to a Marine Corps plan to attack Japan with millions of bats armed with tiny napalm time bombs, to the reflections of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, a girl who knew firsthand about its power and its morality.

Our planet is threatened by a mistaken confidence in erroneously calculated growth. The term “economic growth” can only mean an increase in human welfare, but it is often wrongly identified with production growth that may in fact be destructive to the environment. Thus, while the measures of standard National Income (NI) or Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are useful for many purposes, they are inadequate in guiding environmental policy making. This book develops the corrective concept of an environmentally Sustainable National Income (eSNI). eSNI is defined as the maximally attainable level of production, using the technology of the year under review, whereby the vital environmental functions (possible uses) of the not-human-made physical surroundings remain available for future generations. In order to accurately judge environmental sustainability, the authors show, NI and eSNI must be addressed jointly. Drawing on data from the Netherlands from 1990 to 2015, the authors demonstrate the effectiveness of eSNI and argue that national statistical bureaus around the world should provide this measure to their own policymakers, so that policymaking across the globe might be informed by sound information about both national economies and the global environment.

Like the Greeks who sailed with Jason in search of the Golden Fleece, the new Argonauts--foreign-born, technically skilled entrepreneurs who travel back and forth between Silicon Valley and their home countries--seek their fortune in distant lands by launching companies far from established centers of skill and technology. Their story illuminates profound transformations in the global economy.

Economic geographer AnnaLee Saxenian has followed this transformation, exploring one of its great paradoxes: how the "brain drain" has become "brain circulation," a powerful economic force for development of formerly peripheral regions. The new Argonauts--armed with Silicon Valley experience and relationships and the ability to operate in two countries simultaneously--quickly identify market opportunities, locate foreign partners, and manage cross-border business operations.

The New Argonauts extends Saxenian's pioneering research into the dynamics of competition in Silicon Valley. The book brings a fresh perspective to the way that technology entrepreneurs build regional advantage in order to compete in global markets. Scholars, policymakers, and business leaders will benefit from Saxenian's firsthand research into the investors and entrepreneurs who return home to start new companies while remaining tied to powerful economic and professional communities in the United States.

For Americans accustomed to unchallenged economic domination, the fast-growing capabilities of China and India may seem threatening. But as Saxenian convincingly displays in this pathbreaking book, the Argonauts have made America richer, not poorer.

This volume looks at the changing face of policy advising from the perspective of the author's forty years of work in and for developing countries. Both a personal memoir and an essay on the nature of the development profession, the book will be of particular interest to those just starting their careers as policy advisers.

The main lesson to be learned, says the author, is that "there is no common formula for solving a country's problems. Each society must come up with its own formula, in which economic policy is only one important variable in a complex equation. We missionaries can best help our counterparts carry out this daunting task by teaching more than preaching, and by insisting that they themselves take full responsibility for their recommendations and actions."

Richard D. Mallon is a Fellow Emeritus of the Harvard Institute for International Development. He has provided macroeconomic policy and planning advice in fifteen countries.

In an uncertain international economic environment, the United States is increasingly dependent upon foreign suppliers for many things, including nonfuel minerals. This book deals with the major problems and policy issues involved with these minerals. The major problems concern the medium- and long-term availability of world supplies, the competitive structure of nonfuel mineral industries, and the location of world production and consumption. Special attention is given to the production of nonfuel minerals in developing countries and the role of foreign investment in Third World mineral industries. The major policy include reducing U.S. vulnerability to disruption of imports of nonfuel minerals; subsidizing, or protecting against imports, domestic producers of nonfuel minerals; conflicts between environmentalists and the mining industry; and international loans to Third World metal-producing countries. While the treatment of conflicting policy positions is objective, the author comes out on the side of unrestricted competition in world markets, including elimination of domestic subsidies to import barriers, the use of economic stockpiles to reduce vulnerability to import disruption, and maintenance of strict environmental pollution standards. The author is optimistic about the long-run outlook for mineral supplies necessary to meet world requirements for economic growth. United States domestic mineral independence may be unnecessary in terms of national security and too costly to consumers and the environment.