Places Keynes's concern with probability and uncertainty in full historical context.

New Jersey historian John T. Cunningham explores the overlooked Revolutionary War winters of General George Washington¿s army encampments at Morristown and Middlebrook. He makes the case that the Continental Army ¿ and the American Revolution ¿ may have survived from 1777 until 1781 because of the ¿geological fortress¿ of New Jersey¿s Watchung Mountains and because of the residents of the region¿s small towns and farms. He also explores the founding of the country¿s first National Historical Park in 1933 to preserve the physical places where Washington and his army survived in the Watchungs.

In November of 2003, a stolen election in the former Soviet republic of Georgia led to protests and the eventual resignation of President Eduard Shevardnadze. Shevardnadze was replaced by a democratically elected government led by President Mikheil Saakashvili, who pledged to rebuild Georgia, orient it toward the West, and develop a European-style democracy. Known as the Rose Revolution, this early twenty-first-century democratic movement was only one of the so-called color revolutions (Orange in Ukraine, Tulip in Kyrgyzstan, and Cedar in Lebanon). What made democratic revolution in Georgia thrive when so many similar movements in the early part of the decade dissolved? Lincoln A. Mitchell witnessed the Rose Revolution firsthand, even playing a role in its manifestation by working closely with key Georgian actors who brought about change. In Uncertain Democracy, Mitchell recounts the events that led to the overthrow of Shevardnadze and analyzes the factors that contributed to the staying power of the new regime. The book also explores the modest but indispensable role of the United States in contributing to the Rose Revolution and Georgia's failure to live up to its democratic promise. Uncertain Democracy is the first scholarly examination of Georgia's recent political past. Drawing upon primary sources, secondary documents, and his own NGO experience, Mitchell presents a compelling case study of the effect of U.S. policy of promoting democracy abroad.

Digital information and communication technologies can be seen as a threat to privacy, a step forward for freedom of expression and communication, a tool in the fight against terrorism or the source of a new economic wealth. Computerization has unexpectedly progressed beyond our imagination, from a tool of management and control into one of widespread communication and expression. This book revisits the major questions that have emerged with the progress of computerization over nearly half a century, by describing the context in which these issues were formulated. By taking a social and digital approach, the author explores controversial issues surrounding the development of this "digital revolution", including freedom and privacy of the individual, social control, surveillance, public security and the economic exploitation of personal data. From students, teachers and researchers engaged in data analysis, to institutional decision-makers and actors in policy or business, all members of today's digital society will take from this book a better understanding of the essential issues of the current "digital revolution".

Throughout Eastern Europe, the unexpected and irrevocable fall of communism that began in the late 1980s presented enormous challenges in the spheres of politics and society, as well as at the level of individual experience. Excitement, uncertainty, and fear predicated the shaping of a new order, the outcome of which was anything but predetermined. Recent studies have focused on the ambivalent impact of capitalism. Yet, at the time, parliamentary democracy had equally few traditions to return to, and membership in the European Union was a distant dream at best. Nowadays, as new threats arise, Europe’s current political crises prompt us to reconsider how liberal democracy in Eastern Europe came about in the first place. This book undertakes an analysis of the year 1990 in several countries throughout Europe to consider the role of uncertainty and change in shaping political nations.

Young Continental soldiers carried a heavy burden in the American Revolution. Their experiences of coming of age during the upheavals of war provide a novel perspective on the Revolutionary era, eliciting questions of gender, family life, economic goals, and politics. "Going for a soldier" forced young men to confront profound uncertainty, and even coercion, but also offered them novel opportunities. Although the war imposed obligations on youths, military service promised young men in their teens and early twenties alternate paths forward in life. Continental soldiers’ own youthful expectations about respectable manhood and their goals of economic competence and marriage not only ordered their experience of military service; they also shaped the fighting capacities of George Washington’s army and the course of the war. Becoming Men of Some Consequence examines how young soldiers and officers joined the army, their experiences in the ranks, their relationships with civilians, their choices about quitting long-term military service, and their attempts to rejoin the flow of civilian life after the war. The book recovers young soldiers’ perspectives and stories from military records, wartime letters and journals, and postwar memoirs and pension applications, revealing how revolutionary political ideology intertwined with rational calculations and youthful ambitions. Its focus on soldiers as young men offers a new understanding of the Revolutionary War, showing how these soldiers’ generational struggle for their own independence was a profound force within America’s struggle for its independence.