History?Theory?Action
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 16529893 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ernest R May (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1994 |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 589-603 |
| Publication date | 1994-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Diplomatic History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0145-2096 • E-ISSN: 1467-7709 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-7709.1994.tb00570.x |
| OpenAlex | W2150809238 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 2 |
Every historian should read Bridging the Gap. It is a book by one of America's foremost political scientists that can be understood without a social-science translator, and it poses questions that all historians should ponder. Alexander George is and has always been a user of other disciplines. One of his early books, written with his wife, Juliette, was the psychoanalytic study, Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, which still fires debate among Wilson scholars.1 Since then, George has often drawn on cognitive psychology. His interest in history was evident in Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice, written with Richard Smoke, which won a Bancroft Prize, and in Force and Statecraft: Diplomatic Problems of Our Time, written jointly with Gordon Craig.2 Bridging the Gap, George's sixteenth book, applies his special multi-disciplinary approach to a problem that has concerned him for decades—how scholarship can aid governmental decision making. The book deplores the uselessness of much international relations theory and argues that, if better theories were developed, decision makers would make use of them. It also argues by implication, as George has argued explicitly in the past, that better international relations theories should be built on analysis of history
Action (physics · Physics · Political science · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · International Relations and Foreign Policy
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |