Download Free The Pacific Power Story Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online The Pacific Power Story and write the review.

China, red or green -- Countering Japan -- Five ragged islands -- The golden years -- Japan says no -- Asian values -- Apologies and their discontents -- Yasukuni respects -- History's cauldron -- The Ampo mafia -- The rise and retreat of great powers -- China lays down the law -- Nationalization -- Creation myths -- Freezing point -- Afterword
A comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society throughout history, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. "I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next 'Star Wars' movie. In his latest book, Energy and Civilization: A History, he goes deep and broad to explain how innovations in humans' ability to turn energy into heat, light, and motion have been a driving force behind our cultural and economic progress over the past 10,000 years. —Bill Gates, Gates Notes, Best Books of the Year Energy is the only universal currency; it is necessary for getting anything done. The conversion of energy on Earth ranges from terra-forming forces of plate tectonics to cumulative erosive effects of raindrops. Life on Earth depends on the photosynthetic conversion of solar energy into plant biomass. Humans have come to rely on many more energy flows—ranging from fossil fuels to photovoltaic generation of electricity—for their civilized existence. In this monumental history, Vaclav Smil provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. Humans are the only species that can systematically harness energies outside their bodies, using the power of their intellect and an enormous variety of artifacts—from the simplest tools to internal combustion engines and nuclear reactors. The epochal transition to fossil fuels affected everything: agriculture, industry, transportation, weapons, communication, economics, urbanization, quality of life, politics, and the environment. Smil describes humanity's energy eras in panoramic and interdisciplinary fashion, offering readers a magisterial overview. This book is an extensively updated and expanded version of Smil's Energy in World History (1994). Smil has incorporated an enormous amount of new material, reflecting the dramatic developments in energy studies over the last two decades and his own research over that time.
Soon after the American Revolution, ?certain of the founders began to recognize the strategic significance of Asia and the Pacific and the vast material and cultural resources at stake there. Over the coming generations, the United States continued to ask how best to expand trade with the region and whether to partner with China, at the center of the continent, or Japan, looking toward the Pacific. Where should the United States draw its defensive line, and how should it export democratic principles? In a history that spans the eighteenth century to the present, Michael J. Green follows the development of U.S. strategic thinking toward East Asia, identifying recurring themes in American statecraft that reflect the nation's political philosophy and material realities. Drawing on archives, interviews, and his own experience in the Pentagon and White House, Green finds one overarching concern driving U.S. policy toward East Asia: a fear that a rival power might use the Pacific to isolate and threaten the United States and prevent the ocean from becoming a conduit for the westward free flow of trade, values, and forward defense. By More Than Providence works through these problems from the perspective of history's major strategists and statesmen, from Thomas Jefferson to Alfred Thayer Mahan and Henry Kissinger. It records the fate of their ideas as they collided with the realities of the Far East and adds clarity to America's stakes in the region, especially when compared with those of Europe and the Middle East.
Few people today know that in the nineteenth century, Hawai‘i was not only an internationally recognized independent nation but played a crucial role in the entire Pacific region and left an important legacy throughout Oceania. As the first non-Western state to gain full recognition as a coequal of the Western powers, yet at the same time grounded in indigenous tradition and identity, the Hawaiian Kingdom occupied a unique position in the late nineteenth-century world order. From this position, Hawai‘i’s leaders were able to promote the building of independent states based on their country’s model throughout the Pacific, envisioning the region to become politically unified. Such a pan-Oceanian polity would be able to withstand foreign colonialism and become, in the words of one of the idea’s pioneers, “a Power in the World.” After being developed over three decades among both native and non-native intellectuals close to the Hawaiian court, King Kalākaua’s government started implementing this vision in 1887 by concluding a treaty of confederation with Sāmoa, a first step toward a larger Hawaiian-led pan-Oceanian federation. Political unrest and Western imperialist interference in both Hawai‘i and Sāmoa prevented the project from advancing further at the time, and a long interlude of colonialism and occupation has obscured its legacy for over a century. Nonetheless it remains an inspiring historical precedent for movements toward greater political and economic integration in the Pacific Islands region today. Lorenz Gonschor examines two intertwined historical processes: The development of a Hawai‘i-based pan-Oceanian policy and underlying ideology, which in turn provided the rationale for the second process, the spread of the Hawaiian Kingdom’s constitutional model to other Pacific archipelagos. He argues that the legacy of this visionary policy is today re-emerging in the form of two interconnected movements—namely a growing movement in Hawai‘i to reclaim its legacy as Oceania’s historically leading nation-state on one hand, and an increasingly assertive Oceanian regionalism emanating mainly from Fiji and other postcolonial states in the Southwestern Pacific on the other. As a historical reference for both, nineteenth-century Hawaiian policy serves as an inspiration and guideline for envisioning de-colonial futures for the Pacific region.
The Pacific Northwest holds an abundance of resources for energy production, from hydroelectric power to coal, nuclear power, wind turbines, and even solar panels. But hydropower is king. Dams on the Columbia, Snake, Fraser, Kootenay, and dozens of other rivers provided the foundation for an expanding, regionally integrated power system in the U.S. Northwest and British Columbia. A broad historical synthesis chronicling the region's first century of electrification, Paul Hirt's new study reveals how the region's citizens struggled to build a power system that was technologically efficient, financially profitable, and socially and environmentally responsible. Hirt shows that every energy source comes with its share of costs and benefits. Because Northwest energy development meant river development, the electric power industry collided with the salmon fishing industry and the treaty rights of Northwest indigenous peoples from the 1890s to the present. Because U.S. federal agencies like the Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation built many of the large dams in the region, a significant portion of the power supply is publicly owned, initiating contentious debates over how that power should best serve the citizens of the region. Hirt dissects these ongoing battles, evaluating the successes and failures of regional efforts to craft an efficient yet socially just power system. Focusing on the dynamics of problem-solving, governance, and the tense relationship between profit-seeking and the public interest, Hirt's narrative takes in a wide range of players-not only on the consumer side, where electricity transformed mills, mines, households, commercial districts, urban transit, factories, and farms, but also power companies operating at the local and regional level, and investment companies that financed and in some cases parasitized the operators. His study also straddles the international border. It is the first book to compare energy development in the U.S. Northwest and British Columbia. Both engaging and balanced in its treatment of all the actors on this expansive stage, The Wired Northwest helps us better understand the challenges of the twenty-first century, as we try to learn from past mistakes and re-design an energy grid for a more sustainable future.
America is the first world power to inhabit an immense land mass open at both ends to the world’s two largest oceans—the Atlantic and the Pacific. This gives America a great competitive advantage often overlooked by Atlanticists, whose focus remains overwhelmingly fixed on America’s relationship with Europe. Bruce Cumings challenges the Atlanticist perspective in this innovative new history, arguing that relations with Asia influenced our history greatly. Cumings chronicles how the movement westward, from the Middle West to the Pacific, has shaped America’s industrial, technological, military, and global rise to power. He unites domestic and international history, international relations, and political economy to demonstrate how technological change and sharp economic growth have created a truly bicoastal national economy that has led the world for more than a century. Cumings emphasizes the importance of American encounters with Mexico, the Philippines, and the nations of East Asia. The result is a wonderfully integrative history that advances a strong argument for a dual approach to American history incorporating both Atlanticist and Pacificist perspectives.
On 27 October 1942, four 'Long Lance' torpedoes fired by the Japanese destroyers Makigumo and Akigumo exploded in the hull of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-8). Minutes later, the ship that had launched the Doolitte Raid six months earlier slipped beneath the waves of the Coral Sea. Of the pre-war carrier fleet the Navy had struggled to build over 15 years, only three were left: USS Enterprise, which had been badly damaged in the battle of Santa Cruz; USS Saratoga (CV-3) which lay in dry dock, victim of a Japanese submarine torpedo; and the USS Ranger (CV-4), which was in the mid-Atlantic on her way to support Operation Torch. For the American naval aviators licking their wounds in the aftermath of this defeat, it would be difficult to imagine that within 24 months of this event, Zuikaku, the last survivor of the carriers that had attacked Pearl Harbor, would lie at the bottom of the sea. Alongside it lay the other surviving Japanese carriers, sacrificed as lures in a failed attempt to block the American invasion of the Philippines, leaving the United States to reign supreme on the world's largest ocean. Now publishing in paperback, this is the fascinating account of the Central Pacific campaign, one of the most stunning comebacks in naval history, as in just 14 months the US Navy went from the jaws of defeat to the brink of victory in the Pacific.
Meet Michael Skelly, the man boldly harnessing wind energy that could power America’s future and break its fossil fuel dependence in this “essential, compelling look into the future of the nation’s power grid” (Bryan Burrough, author of The Big Rich). The United States is in the midst of an energy transition. We have fallen out of love with dirty fossil fuels and want to embrace renewable energy sources like wind and solar. A transition from a North American power grid that is powered mostly by fossil fuels to one that is predominantly clean is feasible, but it would require a massive building spree—wind turbines, solar panels, wires, and billions of dollars would be needed. Enter Michael Skelly, an infrastructure builder who began working on wind energy in 2000 when many considered the industry a joke. Eight years later, Skelly helped build the second largest wind power company in the United States—and sold it for $2 billion. Wind energy was no longer funny—it was well on its way to powering more than 6% of electricity in the United States. Award-winning journalist, Russel Gold tells Skelly’s story, which in many ways is the story of our nation’s evolving relationship with renewable energy. Gold illustrates how Skelly’s company, Clean Line Energy, conceived the idea for a new power grid that would allow sunlight where abundant to light up homes in the cloudy states thousands of miles away, and take wind from the Great Plains to keep air conditioners running in Atlanta. Thrilling, provocative, and important, Superpower is a fascinating look at America’s future.