The Backroom Boys

Download or read book The Backroom Boys written by Noam Chomsky and published by Fontana Press. This book was released on 1973 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Backroom Boys written by Francis Spufford and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2010-11-25 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant, beautiful account of how British boffins triumphed across the decades in creating everything from computer games to Martian landers. The book contains chapters on the Beagle II, Elite - the 80s computer game, the Blue Streak missile, Concorde, mobile phone technology and the Human Genome Project, among others. Britain is the only country in the world to have cancelled its space programme just as it put its first rocket into orbit. Starting with this forgotten episode, 'Backroom Boys' tells the bittersweet story of how one country lost its industrial tradition and got back something else. Sad, inspiring, funny and ultimately triumphant, it follows the technologists whose work kept Concorde flying, created the computer game, conquered the mobile-phone business, saved the human genome for the human race - and who now are sending the Beagle 2 probe to burrow in the cinnamon sands of Mars. 'Backroom Boys' is a vivid love-letter to quiet men in pullovers, to those whose imaginings take shape not in words but in mild steel and carbon fibre and lines of code. Above all, it is a celebration of big dreams achieved with slender means.

Download or read book The Backroom Boys written by Graeme Sligo and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-10-05 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Backroom Boys is the remarkable, but little known, story of how a varied group of talented intellectuals, drafted into the Australian Army in the dark days of 1942, provided high-level policy advice to Australia’s most senior soldier, General Blamey, and through him to the Government for the remainder of the war and beyond. This band of academics, lawyers and New Guinea patrol officers formed a unique military unit, the Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs, under the command of an eccentric and masterful string-puller, Alf Conlon. The Directorate has been depicted as a haven for underemployed poets or meddlesome soldier-politicians. Based on wide-ranging research, this book reveals a fuller and more fascinating picture. The fierce conflicts in the wartime bureaucracy between public servants and soldiers, in which the Directorate provided critical support to Blamey, went to the heart of military command, accountability and the profession of arms. The Directorate was a pioneer in developing approaches to military government in areas liberated by the combat troops, as demonstrated by the Australian Army in New Guinea, and Borneo in 1945-46. It is an issue of enduring importance. The Directorate established the Australian School of Pacific Administration, and had an important role in founding the Australian National University. Its influence extended into post war Australia. The Backroom Boys emphasises the personality of Colonel Alf Conlon, as well as the talented men and women he recruited. Above all, this book shows how, unexpectedly, the Australian Army fostered a group of men and women who made a lasting contribution to the development of Australia in the decades after the war.

Download or read book The Small Back Room written by Nigel Balchin and published by . This book was released on 1949 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Boys of Disco City written by Zack and published by Bruno Gmuender. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Escaped from movie mogul James Rosen's depraved clutches in Rome, American Gil Graham and his boyfriend Mike Smith head for London to set up home together. Mike introduces Gil to the hectic joys of giant disco Paradise. Hot backroom action, cruising Hampstead Heath, gladiatorial combat, and a porn-movie shoot are all part of Gil and Mike's adventures. But can the idyll last once Rosen turns up, bent on revenge?

Download or read book Backroom Boys written by Edward Smithies and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 2015-11-12 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When we remember the Second World War in the air, we think of fighter pilots and bomber crews. But what was it like for the men and women working as ground crew and in the aircraft factories who also played a crucial role in defeating Hitler? What was it like making history? What sense did these individuals have of what they were doing, either at the time or later? Did they feel they were caught up in the tide of great events? Or were they simply doing their demanding and often dangerous duty?

Download or read book For Reasons Of State written by Noam Chomsky and published by Penguin Books India. This book was released on 2003-07 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chomsky S Second Major Collection Of Political Writings, Following His Pathbreaking American Power And The New Mandarins An Essential Record Of Chomsky S Political And Social Thought As It Was Sharpened On The Upheavals In Domestic And International Affairs Of The Early 1970S, For Reasons Of State Is A Major Addition To The Intellectual History Of The Vietnam Era. It Includes Articles On The War In Vietnam And The 'Wider War' In Laos And Cambodia, An Extensive Dissection Of The Pentagon Papers, Reflections On The Role Of Force In International Affairs, Essays On Civil Disobedience And The Role Of The University, And A Now-Classic Introduction To Anarchism. These Contributions Reveal Very Different Facets Of Chomsky S Powers As A Thinker, From His Uncanny Ability To Join Abstract Philosophical Considerations With The Concrete Political Realities Of His Time, To His Singular Capacity To Mount Withering, Fact-Based Critiques Of American Foreign Policy.