During the course of his short but extraordinary life, John Ledyard (1751–1789) came in contact with some of the most remarkable figures of his era: the British explorer Captain James Cook, American financier Robert Morris, Revolutionary naval commander John Paul Jones, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and others. Ledyard lived and traveled in remarkable places as well, journeying from the New England backcountry to Tahiti, Hawaii, the American Northwest coast, Alaska, and the Russian Far East. In this engaging biography, the historian Edward Gray offers not only a full account of Ledyard’s eventful life but also an illuminating view of the late eighteenth-century world in which he lived. Ledyard was both a product of empire and an agent in its creation, Gray shows, and through this adventurer’s life it is possible to discern the many ways empire shaped the lives of nations, peoples, and individuals in the era of the American Revolution, the world’s first modern revolt against empire.

Ledyard's Siberian journals recount a harrowing journey through Russia under the rule of Catherine the Great, while his diary from Alexandria and Cairo provides a brilliant and rare account of Egypt before Napoleon's invasion. Finally, Ledyard's correspondence sheds light on pre-revolutionary Paris and on his friendships with the Marquis de Lafayette, Benjamin Franklin, and Sir Joseph Banks. In his short life, John Ledyard traveled farther than any American had before."--Jacket.

Journalist Bill Gifford gives us a life--and follows in the footsteps--of an early American explorer, whose exploits (including walking across all of Russia) and inspired Lewis and Clark.

This book, which comprises eight chapters, presents a comprehensive critical survey of the results and methods of laboratory experiments in economics. The first chapter provides an introduction to experimental economics as a whole, with the remaining chapters providing surveys by leading practitioners in areas of economics that have seen a concentration of experiments: public goods, coordination problems, bargaining, industrial organization, asset markets, auctions, and individual decision making. The work aims both to help specialists set an agenda for future research and to provide nonspecialists with a critical review of work completed to date. Its focus is on elucidating the role of experimental studies as a progressive research tool so that wherever possible, emphasis is on series of experiments that build on one another. The contributors to the volume--Colin Camerer, Charles A. Holt, John H. Kagel, John O. Ledyard, Jack Ochs, Alvin E. Roth, and Shyam Sunder--adopt a particular methodological point of view: the way to learn how to design and conduct experiments is to consider how good experiments grow organically out of the issues and hypotheses they are designed to investigate.

Who were the men who led America's first expeditions into space? Soldiers? Daredevils? The public sometimes imagined them that way: heroic military men and hot-shot pilots without the capacity for doubt, fear, or worry. However, early astronauts were hard-working and determined professionals - 'organization men' - who were calm, calculating, and highly attuned to the politics and celebrity of the Space Race. Many would have been at home in corporate America - and until the first rockets carried humans into space, some seemed to be headed there. Instead, they strapped themselves to missiles and blasted skyward, returning with a smile and an inspiring word for the press. From the early days of Project Mercury to the last moon landing, this lively history demystifies the American astronaut while revealing the warring personalities, raw ambition, and complex motives of the men who were the public face of the space program.

The little-known story of the architectural project that lay at the heart of Tom Paine’s political blueprint for the United States. In a letter to his wife Abigail, John Adams judged the author of Common Sense as having “a better hand at pulling down than building.” Adams’s dismissive remark has helped shape the prevailing view of Tom Paine ever since. But, as Edward G. Gray shows in this fresh, illuminating work, Paine was a builder. He had a clear vision of success for his adopted country. It was embodied in an architectural project that he spent a decade planning: an iron bridge to span the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia. When Paine arrived in Philadelphia from England in 1774, the city was thriving as America’s largest port. But the seasonal dangers of the rivers dividing the region were becoming an obstacle to the city’s continued growth. Philadelphia needed a practical connection between the rich grain of Pennsylvania’s backcountry farms and its port on the Delaware. The iron bridge was Paine’s solution. The bridge was part of Paine’s answer to the central political challenge of the new nation: how to sustain a republic as large and as geographically fragmented as the United States. The iron construction was Paine’s brilliant response to the age-old challenge of bridge technology: how to build a structure strong enough to withstand the constant battering of water, ice, and wind. The convergence of political and technological design in Paine’s plan was Enlightenment genius. And Paine drew other giants of the period as patrons: Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and for a time his great ideological opponent, Edmund Burke. Paine’s dream ultimately was a casualty of the vicious political crosscurrents of revolution and the American penchant for bridges of cheap, plentiful wood. But his innovative iron design became the model for bridge construction in Britain as it led the world into the industrial revolution.

The reach of the social and behavioral sciences is currently so broad and interdisciplinary that staying abreast of developments has become a daunting task. The thirty papers that constitute Leading Edges in Social and Behavioral Science provide a unique composite picture of recent findings and promising new research opportunities within most areas of social and behavioral research. Prepared by expert scholars under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences, these timely and well-documented reports define research priorities for an impressive range of topics: Part I: Mind and Brain Part II: Behavior in Social Context Part III: Choice and Allocation Part IV: Evolving Institutions Part V: Societies and International Orders Part VI: Data and Analysis