This is a practical guide to the historical study of international politics. The focus is on the nuts and bolts of historical research--that is, on how to use original sources, analyze and interpret historical works, and actually write a work of history. Two appendixes provide sources sure to be indispensable for anyone doing research in this area. The book does not simply lay down precepts. It presents examples drawn from the author's more than forty years' experience as a working historian. One important chapter, dealing with America's road to war in 1941, shows in unprecedented detail how an interpretation of a major historical issue can be developed. The aim throughout is to throw open the doors of the workshop so that young scholars, both historians and political scientists, can see the sort of thought processes the historian goes through before he or she puts anything on paper. Filled with valuable examples, this is a book anyone serious about conducting historical research will want to have on the bookshelf.

In the twentieth century, dyes, pharmaceuticals, photographic products, explosives, insecticides, fertilizers, synthetic rubber, fuels, and fibers, plastics, and other products have flowed out of the chemical industry and into the consumer economies, war machines, farms, and medical practices of industrial societies. The German chemical industry has been a major site for the development and application of the science-based technologies that gave rise to these products, and has had an important role as exemplar, stimulus, and competitor in the international chemical industry. This volume explores the German chemical industry's scientific and technological dimension, its international connections, and its development after 1945. The authors relate scientific and technological change in the industry to evolving German political and economic circumstances, including two world wars, the rise and fall of National Socialism, the post-war division of Germany, and the emergence of a global economy. This book will be of interest to historians of modern Germany, to historians of science and technology, and to business and economic historians.

Considers (88) H.R. 6237.