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American Defense Reform
Lessons from Failure and Success in Navy History
Dave Oliver
Georgetown University Press

A roadmap for US military innovation based on the Navy’s history of success through civilian-military collaborations

The US military must continually adapt to evolving technologies, shifting adversaries, and a changing social environment for its personnel. In American Defense Reform, Dave Oliver and Anand Toprani use US naval history as a guide for leading successful change in the Pentagon.

American Defense Reform provides a historical analysis of the Navy during four key periods of disruptive transformation: the 1940s Revolt of the Admirals, the McNamara Revolution in systems analysis, the fallout from the Vietnam War, and the end of the Cold War. The authors draw insights from historical documents, previously unpublished interviews from four-star admirals, and Oliver’s own experiences as a senior naval officer and defense industry executive. They show that Congress alone cannot effectively create change and reveal barriers to applying the experience of the private sector to the public sector

Ultimately, Oliver and Toprani show that change can only come from a collaborative effort between civilians, the military, and industry, each making vital contributions. American Defense Reform provides insights and practical recommendations essential to reforming national defense to meet future demands.

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America's Urban Future
Lessons from North of the Border
Ray Tomalty and Alan Mallach
Island Press, 2016

The headlines about cities celebrating their resurgence—with empty nesters and Millennials alike investing in our urban areas, moving away from car dependence, and demanding walkable, transit-oriented neighborhoods. But, in reality, these changes are taking place in a scattered and piecemeal fashion. While areas of a handful of cities are booming, most US metros continue to follow old patterns of central city decline and suburban sprawl. As demographic shifts change housing markets and climate change ushers in new ways of looking at settlement patterns, pressure for change in urban policy is growing. More and more policy makers are raising questions about the soundness of policies that squander our investment in urban housing, built environment, and infrastructure while continuing to support expansion of sprawling, auto-dependent development. Changing these policies is the central challenge facing US cities and metro regions, and those who manage them or plan their future.

In America’s Urban Future, urban experts Tomalty and Mallach examine US policy in the light of the Canadian experience, and use that experience as a starting point to generate specific policy recommendations. Their recommendations are designed to help the US further its urban revival, build more walkable, energy-efficient communities, and in particular, help land use adapt better to the needs of the aging population. Tomalty and Mallach show how Canada, a country similar to the US in many respects, has fostered healthier urban centers and more energy- and resource-efficient suburban growth. They call for a rethinking of US public policies across those areas and look closely at what may be achievable at federal, state, and local levels in light of both the constraints and opportunities inherent in today’s political systems and economic realities.


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The Art of Military Innovation
Lessons from the Israel Defense Forces
Edward N. Luttwak and Eitan Shamir
Harvard University Press, 2023

A world-leading military strategist and an IDF insider explain the improbable success of the Israeli armed forces.

When the Israel Defense Forces was established in May 1948, it was small, poorly equipped, and already at war. Lacking sufficient weaponry or the domestic industrial base to produce it, the newborn military was forced to make do with whatever it could get its hands on. That spirit of improvisation carried the IDF to a decisive victory in the First Arab-Israeli War.

Today the same spirit has made the IDF the most powerful military in the Middle East and among the most capable in the world. In The Art of Military Innovation, Edward N. Luttwak and Eitan Shamir trace the roots of this astounding success. What sets the IDF apart, they argue, is its singular organizational structure. From its inception, it has been the world’s only one-service military, encompassing air, naval, and land forces in a single institutional body. This unique structure, coupled with a young officer corps, allows for initiative from below. The result is a nimble organization inclined toward change rather than beholden to tradition.

The IDF has fostered some of the most significant advances in military technology of the past seventy years, from the first wartime use of drones to the famed Iron Dome missile defense system, and now the first laser weapon, Iron Beam. Less-heralded innovations in training, logistics, and human resources have been equally important. Sharing rich insights and compelling stories, Luttwak and Shamir reveal just what makes the IDF so agile and effective.

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Audionarratology
Lessons from Radio Drama
Lars Bernaerts and Jarmila Mildorf
The Ohio State University Press, 2021
Radio drama has been around for more than one hundred years and is still vibrant in many countries. A narrative-dramatic genre and art form in its own right, radio drama has traditionally crossed medial and generic boundaries and continues to do so in our age of digitization. Audionarratology: Lessons from Audio Drama, edited by Lars Bernaerts and Jarmila Mildorf, explores radio drama from a narratological angle. The contributions cover key questions surrounding audiophonic meaning-making, storyworld creation, mediation, focalization, suspense, unreliability, and ambiguity as well as the relationship between script and performance, seriality, antinarrative tendencies, and radio drama’s political implications now and in its early days. The book thus explores the interplay between sound, voices, music, language, silence, electroacoustic manipulation, and narrative structures. Providing examples from American, Australian, British, Dutch, and German radio drama—such as I Love a MysteryThe War of the Worlds, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy—this book has important insights for scholars working in transmedial narratology, media studies, literary and cultural studies, theatre and performance studies, and communication studies as well as for practitioners and lovers of radio drama alike.
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