Modern Arms and Free Men by Bush, Vannevar - 1949

New York: Simon and Schuster, 1949. First Edition. Very Good+/Very Good. Signed first edition. Advance copy with publisher's card announcing "Advance Copy / Publication Date, Nov. 21" laid in along with publisher's reply post card. Inscribed by author to Wallace Sterling, longtime Stanford University President. [xiv], 273, (1) pp. Original red cloth with gilt lettering blocked in black. Very Good+ in Very Good price-clipped dust jacket, spine sunned through to cloth, light edge wear and a few small stains. A nice association between two very important figures in the post-WWII "military-industrial-academic complex" as scholar Henry Giroux has maintained Eisenhower originally meant to say (rather than the final, better-known "military industrial complex."). Whatever it's called, Bush was undoubtedly one of its architects. He chaired the National Research Defense Committee and directed the influential U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, doling out funds to scientists for defense applications of their work. Today he is most often cited for his groundbreaking works on early computing and information theory. As President of Stanford from 1949-1968 inscribee Wallace Sterling oversaw the school's rapid gains in academic prestige as well as its financial transformation into a prototypical cold war academic institution reliant on industrial and government funds, earning him the nickname "Stanford's man with the Midas touch.