The sci-fi is at best a thin veneer, and looks like it might even have been tacked onto rework an existing script, it's not terribly written but i was completely unengaged by it and might not have made it through had it been a modern door-stopper. Not for me I'm afraid. This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers. Show full review. Tom Britz. I give this a five star, not because it was a hidden classic, but that it was a fun read.
This was McDaniels only foray into the SF field as he sadly died in at the young age of Humanity has spread out to the stars and had many colony planets, and they had even found an ancient space ship from a civilization from before the dawn of man. This civilization had disappeared for some unknown reason.
Then Nature stepped in and a new plague overtook Earth and most of the population died. But the infrastructure was still there, so it wasn't back to the Dark Ages, they were side-lined for a few hundred years and when they finally went back to the stars, they found the colonies hated Earth for mysteriously abandoning them. Most of the colonies suffered and died, the ones that were able to survive were the ones that lived with what they had, they went back to the soil of their new homes to eke out a life, without Earth.
Eventually they were able to decipher the language of the ancient civilization, and after years of cataloging and going over endless documents, our hero Lawrence Edwards came across a small paragraph that seemed to indicate that there was an huge stockpile of ancient weapons and God knows what else buried on some distant planet.
Lawrence talks to his supervisor and one thing leads to another and our hero is made the leader of an expedition to discover this ancient cache.
The story is written in a comedic manner, as the expedition is as inept as possible while still managing to move ahead. This was a fun read, I'm glad I found it. He explores their mentality and describes their private and public worlds which in some ways, he argues, prefigured the factories and company towns of a later era. He uncovers the far-reaching social and cultural role played by women in this industrial community. He shows how the Venetian government formed its shipbuilders into a militia to maintain public order.
And he describes the often colorful ways in which Venetians dealt with the tensions that role provoked—including officially sanctioned community fistfights on the city's bridges. The recent decision by the Italian government to return the Venetian Arsenal to civilian control has sparked renewed interest in the subject among historians.
Shipbuilders of the Venetian Arsenal offers new evidence on the ways in which large, state-run manufacturing operations furthered the industrialization process, as well as on the extent of workers' influence on the social dynamics of the early modern European city. Drawing on a wealth of archival sources, Lane presents detailed descriptions of the Venetian arsenal, including the great galleys that doubled as cargo ships and warships; the sixteenth-century round ships, which introduced dramatic innovations in rigging and were less vulnerable to attack than the galleys; and the majestic galleons, whose straight lines and greater speed made them ideal for merchantmen but whose narrowness made them liable to capsize if loaded with artillery.
Lane also includes vivid accounts of the rivalries between the famous shipbuilders of the period. Additional chapters detail the actual process of ship construction, from the design stage, to framing and ribbing the hull, to building the rigging; the organization and activity of the shipbuilders craft guilds and the various private shipyards; and the development and management of the Arsenal.
Tables and appendixes detail the types, measurements, number, and capacity of the ships, as well as the wages of the shipbuilders. Download How Transformative Innovations Shaped The Rise Of Nations books , Over the last 2, years, critical innovations have transformed small regions into global powers.
But these powers have faded when they did not embrace the next big innovation. Gerard J. Tellis and Stav Rosenzweig argue that openness to new ideas and people, empowerment of individuals and competition are key drivers in the development and adoption of transformative innovations.
These innovations, in turn, fuel economic growth, national dominance and global leadership. In How Transformative Innovations Shaped the Rise of Nations, Tellis and Rosenzweig examine the transformative qualities of concrete in Rome; swift equine warfare in Mongolia; critical navigational innovations in the golden ages of Chinese, Venetian, Portuguese and Dutch empires; the patent system and steam engine in Britain; and mass production in the United States of America.
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Davis offers a vivid and compelling account of these early modern workers. He explores their mentality and describes their private and public worlds which in some ways, he argues, prefigured the factories and company towns of a later era. He uncovers the far-reaching social and cultural role played by women in this industrial community.
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