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The United States, it was once felt, could have a different foreign policy when isolated by two oceans in comparison to the later period when modern technology destroyed its isolation. Foreign policy is thus a function of geography modified by technology. The United States, commencing some time after the first third of the 19th century, had a further choice. It could live up to its self-image as a liberal constitutional democracy and follow a foreign policy of live and let live, in both respects serving as a role model for the rest of the world. Or, like the monarchical dynasties of the past and other regimes of more recent times, it could pursue an aggressive foreign policy in pursuit of what it considered its interests, engendering enmity in various quarters. The United States has done both. In the first category it has preferred isolationism, reluctantly joining the two World Wars in defense of its autonomy. In the second category, it increasingly either engaged in the practices of conventional imperialism, often at the behest of entrepreneurial interests, or flexed and deployed its muscle in pursuit of national interests either on its own initiative or in response to threats from and capabilities of other countries. The former is American exceptionalism; the latter is conventional. Of course, the history is much more complex than the foregoing directly allows. Several other stories or models can be developed (the most recent is Mead, 2001).

Outlines a new method of discovering original documents related to management history. Uses seemingly insignificant statements in books, articles or original documents to locate documents not listed on any computer database or public archive records, but which are undiscovered in attics or basements. The method involves the use of sources not commonly used by management scholars: obituaries, wills, cemetery records, deeds, land‐ownership maps, city directories and court records. Provides two examples to illustrate the discovery of actual documents: (1) the discovery of ten years of correspondence between F.W. Taylor and S. Thompson on the time required to do work, and (2) new evidence on F.W. Taylor’s interest in high‐heat treatment of tool steel leading to high‐speed steel and in shovels and shovelling. Finally presents new evidence on Taylor’s secret agreement with Bethlehem Steel to give favourable testimony in a patent case in exchange for a free licence for the high‐speed steel process Taylor had sold to Bethlehem for more than $50,000 in 1901.

The purpose of this paper is to refute allegations from various sources that, as a pitcher for the Phillips Exeter Academy baseball team, Frederick W. Taylor cheated by using an illegal overhand delivery.

Drawing on archival research, including a recently discovered letter by his son, Robert, this paper dispels the “myth” surrounding Taylor's alleged cheating as a member of the Phillips Exeter Academy baseball team.

This research suggests that the “myth” of Fred's purported cheating may be traced to a January 1934 Esquire Magazine article by American Novelist John R. Dos Passos.

As a consequence, of the information only a son could have provided, this paper sets the record straight concerning Taylor's alleged cheating, and in doing so, demonstrate how a reliance on “myth” rather than “fact” stands in the way of capturing the elusive past.

The importance of the adverse impacts of network degradation has stimulated substantial international research interest in transport network reliability, that is, the ability of degraded transport networks to cope with travel demand. Most of the recent research effort has focused on the reliability of urban passenger transport networks, in terms of the probability that the network will deliver a required standard of performance. This situation is characterised by high levels of congestion, a dense road network, and quantifiable probability of degradation of the network. Outside major urban centres, the situation is very different. The main dominant consideration in transport network infrastructure provision is accessibility - linking urban centres, providing regional coverage, and basic levels of accessibility for the non-urban community and economy. The network is sparse, congestion is not a significant issue, and access to essential community services and to markets is the major driving force underlying network development. In this context, the vulnerability of the network is perhaps more important than ‘reliability’. This paper develops the concept of network vulnerability. It begins by reviewing the current state of research into network reliability, then proposes extensions and adaptations to the reliability concepts that are more appropriate for strategic-level multi-modal transport systems. Several alternative definitions for vulnerability are proposed. The paper also discusses the development of algorithmic and visualisation tools that may be used to identify specific ‘weak spots’ in a network, where failure of some part of the transport infrastructure would have the most serious effects on access to specific locations and on overall system performance. Finally, the paper describes potential applications of network vulnerability concepts, and proposes directions for further research.

Relying on Clive Granger's many and varied contributions to econometric analysis, this paper considers some of the key econometric considerations involved in estimating Taylor-type rules for US data. We focus on the roles of unit roots, cointegration, structural breaks, and non-linearities to make the case that most existing estimates are based on an unbalanced regression. A variety of estimates reveal that neglected cointegration results in the omission of a necessary error correction term and that Federal Reserve (Fed) reactions during the Greenspan era appear to have been asymmetric. We argue that error correction and non-linearities may be one way to estimate Taylor rules over long samples when the underlying policy regime may have changed significantly.

The Seminar on Library Interior Layout and Design organised by IFLA's Section on Library Buildings and Equipment, and attended by people from over twenty‐two countries, was held at Frederiksdal, Denmark, in June 1980. This present article neither reports on the Seminar's proceedings, as it is hoped to publish the papers in due course, nor describes fully the Danish public libraries seen, but rather uses the Seminar's theme and the library visits as a point of departure for considering some aspects of the interior layout—the landscape—of public libraries. Brief details of the new Danish public libraries visited are given in a table at the end of the article.