In Dead Men’s Propaganda: Ideology and Utopia in Comparative Communications Studies, Terhi Rantanen investigates the shaping of early comparative communications research between the 1920s and 1950s, notably the work of academics and men of practice in the United States. Often neglected, this intellectual thread is highly relevant to understanding the 21st-century’s challenges of war and rival streams of propaganda. Borrowing her conceptual lenses from Karl Mannheim and Robert Merton, Rantanen draws on detailed archival research and case studies to analyse the extent and importance of work outside and inside the academy, illuminating the work of pioneers in the field. Some of these were well-known academics such as Harold Lasswell and the authors of the seminal book Four Theories of the Press. Others operated in the world of news agencies, such as Associated Press's Kent Cooper, or were marginalised as émigré scholars, notably Paul Kecskemeti and Nathan Leites. Her study shows how comparative communications, from its very beginning, can be understood as governed by the Mannheimian concepts of ideology and utopia and the power play between them. The close relationship between these two concepts resulted in a bias in knowledge production, contributed to dominant narratives of generational conflicts, and to the demarcation of Insiders and Outsiders. By focusing on a generation at the forefront of comparative communications at this pivotal time in the 20th century, this book challenges orthodoxies in the intellectual histories of communication studies.

This monumental study provides an innovative and powerful means for understanding institutions by applying problem solving theory to the creation and elaboration of formal organizational rules and procedures. Based on a meticulously researched historical analysis of the U.S. Navy’s officer personnel system from its beginnings to 1941, the book is informed by developments in cognitive psychology, cognitive science, operations research, and management science. It also offers important insights into the development of the American administrative state, highlighting broader societal conflicts over equity, efficiency, and economy. Considering the Navy’s personnel system as an institution, the book shows that changes in that system resulted from a long-term process of institutional design, in which formal rules and procedures are established and elaborated. Institutional design is here understood as a problem-solving process comprising day-to-day efforts of many decision makers to resolve the difficulties that block completion of their tasks. The officer personnel system is treated as a problem of organized complexity, with many components interacting in systematic, intricate ways, its structure usually imperfectly understood by the participants. Consequently, much problem solving entails decomposing the larger problem into smaller, more manageable components, closing open constraints, and balancing competing value premises. The author finds that decision makers are unlikely to generate many alternatives, since searching for existing solutions elsewhere or inventing new ones is an expensive, difficult enterprise. Choice is usually a matter of accepting, rejecting, or modifying a single solution. Because time constraints force decisions before problems are well structured, errors are frequently made, problem components are at best only partially addressed, and the chosen solution may not solve the problem at all and even if it does is likely to generate unanticipated side-effects that worsen other problem components. In its definitive treatment of a critical but hitherto entirely unresearched dimension of the administration of the U.S. Navy, the book provides full details over time concerning the elaboration of officer grades and titles, creation of promotion by selection, sea duty requirements, graded retirement, staff-line conflicts, the establishment of the Reserve, and such unusual subjects as “tombstone promotions.” In the process, it transcends the specifics of the personnel system to give a broad picture of the Navy’s history over the first century and a half of its development.

'The theme of Propaganda is quite simply. . . that when our new technology encompasses any culture or society, the result is propaganda. . . . Ellul has made many splendid contributions in this book.' -Robert R. Kirsch, The Los Angeles Times

"Tenant for Death" is a thrilling crime novel by Cyril Hare in which he introduced his readers to the formidable Inspector Mallett of Scotland Yard. It starts when an estate agent's two young clerks go to review an inventory on the house in Daylesford Gardens, South Kensington, where they find a corpse. Moreover, the mysterious tenant, Colin James, has vanished.

Death to Tyrants! is the first comprehensive study of ancient Greek tyrant-killing legislation--laws that explicitly gave individuals incentives to "kill a tyrant." David Teegarden demonstrates that the ancient Greeks promulgated these laws to harness the dynamics of mass uprisings and preserve popular democratic rule in the face of anti-democratic threats. He presents detailed historical and sociopolitical analyses of each law and considers a variety of issues: What is the nature of an anti-democratic threat? How would various provisions of the laws help pro-democrats counter those threats? And did the laws work? Teegarden argues that tyrant-killing legislation facilitated pro-democracy mobilization both by encouraging brave individuals to strike the first blow against a nondemocratic regime and by convincing others that it was safe to follow the tyrant killer's lead. Such legislation thus deterred anti-democrats from staging a coup by ensuring that they would be overwhelmed by their numerically superior opponents. Drawing on modern social science models, Teegarden looks at how the institution of public law affects the behavior of individuals and groups, thereby exploring the foundation of democracy's persistence in the ancient Greek world. He also provides the first English translation of the tyrant-killing laws from Eretria and Ilion. By analyzing crucial ancient Greek tyrant-killing legislation, Death to Tyrants! explains how certain laws enabled citizens to draw on collective strength in order to defend and preserve their democracy in the face of motivated opposition.