Introduction: Knowledge in Exile -- The League Is the Thing: International Society's Super-University -- Plowshares into Swords: Knowledge, Weaponized -- Internationalist Dunkirk: International Society in Exile -- The Rover Boys of Reconstruction: International Society in the American World -- Coda: Great Leaps Forward.

A critical history of Israel and the Arab–Israeli conflict Eminent historian Arno J. Mayer traces the thinkers, leaders, and shifting geopolitical contexts that shaped the founding and development of the Israeli state. He recovers for posterity internal critics such as the philosopher Martin Buber, who argued for peaceful coexistence with the Palestinian Arabs. “A sense of limits is the better part of valour,” Mayer insists. Plowshares into Swords explores Israel’s indefinite deferral of the “Arab Question,” the strategic thinking behind the building of settlements and border walls, and the endurance of Palestinian resistance.

Discover drama in the lives of more than forty Old Testament figures between 4,000 B.C. and 445 B.C. Introduced by the itinerant storyteller, dramatic monologues and dialogues show the Hebrew people caught up in the religious and political turmoil of the times. Patriarchs, prophets, and ordinary folk speak of injustice, inequality, and oppression. Through adversity, the Hebrews define their relationships with their God Yahweh. Old Testament figures, earthy and exemplary, emerge in moments that connect all humans to one family. For church program resources, these story poems lend themselves to devotional reading, table drama, group study, and performance with simple costumes and props. For groups, the vignettes offer questions for discussion with questions for reflection and discussion. The storyteller projects hope for a world in which “justice shatters the blood-edged sword, and mercy proclaims the life-giving plowshare.”

India's nuclear program is often misunderstood as an inward-looking endeavor of secretive technocrats. In Ploughshares and Swords, Jayita Sarkar challenges this received wisdom, narrating a global story of India's nuclear program during its first forty years. The book foregrounds the program's civilian and military features by probing its close relationship with the space program. Through nuclear and space technologies, India's leaders served the technopolitical aims of economic modernity and the geopolitical goals of deterring adversaries. The politically savvy, transnationally connected scientists and engineers who steered the program obtained technologies, materials, and information through a variety of state and nonstate actors from Europe and North America, including both superpowers. They thus maneuvered around Cold War politics and the choke points of the nonproliferation regime. Hyperdiversification increased choices for the leaders of the nuclear program but reduced democratic accountability at home. The nuclear program became a consensus-enforcing device in the name of the nation. Ploughshares and Swords is a provocative new history with global implications. It shows how geopolitical and technopolitical visions influence decisions about the nation after decolonization. Thanks to generous funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.

"General Maxwell D. Taylor was one of the great military heroes of recent American history. During World War II, Taylor fought in Sicily and Italy before parachuting into France as head of the 101st Airborne Division on Dday, 1944. Later he commanded the Division in the Arnhem drop in Holland and in the defense of Basting in the Bulge. After the war, Taylor served as superintendent of West Point, U.S. Commander in Berlin, Commander of the Eighth Army in Korea, and Army Chief of Staff under President Eisenhower. John F. Kennedy named him chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and sent him to Vietnam in 1961; he returned to that country as Ambassador in 1965, and served as a key advisor to President Johnson until 1969. In Swords and Plowshares, Taylor tells the firsthand story of a life of action, courage, strategy, and dedication. Offering candid and controversial views of such central figures as Dwight Eisenhower, John Dulles, the Kennedy's, and General Westmoreland, Taylor contrasts their varying views of the role of air power in modern warfare, and presents his own approach to the problems of winning wars and making peace. These memoirs ably illustrate why General Maxwell Taylor deserves to rank among Marshall, Eisenhower, MacArthur, and Patton as one of the great American military geniuses of our time." -- Publisher.

In September 1980, eight Catholic activists made their way into a Pennsylvania General Electric plant housing parts for nuclear missiles. Evading security guards, these activists pounded on missile nose cones with hammers and then covered the cones in their own blood. This act of nonviolent resistance was their answer to calls for prophetic witness in the Old Testament: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not take up sword against nation; they shall never again know war.” Plowshares explores the closely interwoven religious and social significance of the group’s use of performance to achieve its goals. It looks at the group’s acts of civil disobedience, such as that undertaken at the GE plant in 1980, and the Plowshares’ behavior at the legal trials that result from these protests. Interpreting the Bible as a mandate to enact God’s kingdom through political resistance, the Plowshares work toward “symbolic disarmament,” with the aim of eradicating nuclear weapons. Plowshares activists continue to carry out such “divine obediences” against facilities where equipment used in the production or deployment of nuclear weapons is manufactured or stored. Whether one agrees or disagrees with their actions, this volume helps us better understand their motivations, logic, identity, and ultimate goal.