Introduction: Ellul returns
Many nineteenth century thinkers, convinced of the Enlightenment premise that both nature and society were intelligible, and carried away by the growing prestige of the sciences, saw progress as a natural human development and believed that rational criteria guided societal choices. Biological evolution also appeared to provide a model for change applicable to history. An associated triumphalism in modernity dominated European popular culture until the outbreak of World War I and the post-war rise of dictatorial regimes. Yet even then a positive view of science remained largely intact. Even after World War II, the Shoah, saturation bombings of civilians, and the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the industrialization of science proceeded at an ever faster pace, assisted by an increasing involvement of state power. The United States science adviser Vannevar Bush (1945) went so far as to present post-World War II science as an “endless frontier” and font of social benefits in healthcare, economic development, and military defense.
The George Grant reader
Called the most forceful voice of philosophic radicalism that Canada has so far produced, George Grant was a prolific writer, engaged by subjects ranging from Canadian politics to ancient philosophy. The George Grant Reader is the first book to bring together in one volume a comprehensive selection of his work, allowing readers to sample the whole range of his interests. The reader includes selections from all phases of Grant's career, beginning with The Empire: Yes or No? (1945) and ending with an article on Heidegger, left unfinished at the time of his death in 1988. Forty-six essays, grouped into six sections, encompass his views on politics, morality, philosophy, education, technology, faith, and love. Also featured are Grant's writings on those who most influenced his thought, ranging from St Augustine to Karl Marx and Simone Weil. A number of his more disturbing essays are also included such as his controversial writings on abortion. The editors' substantial introduction places the articles in the wider context of Grant's life and thought. This long-overdue collection contains classic works, little-known masterpieces, and previously unpublished material. The volume is an ideal starting point for those who have never read Grant as well as an indispensable reference for Grant specialists.
Information and Secrecy: Vannevar Bush, Ultra, and the Other Memex
From the Publisher: 
Written for the general reader, Burke's volume provides the first view of the relationships among America's librarians, cryptanalysts and educators as they created information science, computerized codebreaking, and the modern research university. Using hundreds of primary and secret documents and more than twenty illustrations to trace the careers of Vannevar Bush of MIT and the navy's codebreaking agency, OP-20-G, Burke shows how the lack of coherent American science and intelligence policies led to the tangled lives of two proto-computers that were the world's first electronic data-processing machines. The histories of Bush's Memex-like microfilm Rapid Selector for the American Documentalists and his Comparator for those who created the nation's Ultra Bombe and RAM machines began in the early 1930s and suffered through a generation of struggles with intransigent technologies, policy conflicts with the British over the control of signals-intelligence and the unwillingness of America to develop information and intelligence technologies until the Cold War turned to science and the library to fulfill defense needs. Now, as the United States is on the verge of investing billions of dollars in information highways while reducing its intelligence capabilities, the tragedy of Bush's machines warns against information scientists putting technology ahead of logic and of the dangers of the nation returning to isolationism. Indexed and with extensive endnotes which serve the bibliographic function. 
Author Biography: Colin Burke (Ph.D., Washington University) is an historian and educator who has written on American social history, the history of higher education, quantitative methodsand the history of computers. He has received awards from, among others, the SSRC and the Spencer Foundation. He was the senior Fulbright scholar in Poland during the fall of Communism and has acted as a consultant to government agencies.