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Full-Text Articles in History
Direct Responsibility: Caspar Weinberger And The Reagan Defense Buildup, Robert Howard Wieland
Direct Responsibility: Caspar Weinberger And The Reagan Defense Buildup, Robert Howard Wieland
Dissertations
This dissertation explores the life of Caspar Weinberger and explains why President Reagan chose him for Secretary of Defense. Weinberger, not a defense technocrat, managed a massive defense buildup of 1.5 trillion dollars over a four year period. A biographical approach to Weinberger illuminates Reagan’s selection, for in many ways Weinberger harkens back to an earlier type of defense manager more akin to Elihu Root than Robert McNamara; more a man of letters than technocrat. And yet Weinberger, the amateur historian, worked with budgets his entire public career. Essentially, Pentagon governance is the formation of a military budget that proscribes …
Second Families Of Virginia: Professional Power-Brokers In A Revolutionary Age, 1700-1790, Wesley Thomas Joyner
Second Families Of Virginia: Professional Power-Brokers In A Revolutionary Age, 1700-1790, Wesley Thomas Joyner
Dissertations
Between 1700 and 1790, a diverse assortment of merchants, lawyers, doctors, soldiers, and various other specialists forged a prominent position in Virginia that was integral to the colony’s planter-elites. These professionals complicated Virginia’s social hierarchy and affected numerous decisions planters made on personal business ventures, urban development, military conflicts, and political policies. Consequently, as Virginia planters struggled to maintain a sense of socioeconomic dominance, political influence, and familial solidarity, this upper-middling, professional contingent forced planters to compromise their seemingly exclusive modes of behavior. Accounting for the perspectives of professionals and planters, this study addresses how and why this occurred, as …