> Behalf Of Charlie Bell
> GM:
> > In my experience, VC people are some of
> > the last people in the business world who remain "cowboys" as it
> > were - who rely more on instinct and risk-taking than formal
decision
> > models. That's something that the American cultural environment
is
> > uniquely hospitable for.
>
> Uniquely, no. It's a lot easier there though. It's the
> biggest problem our
> company has, waiting for people outside to make decisions, while we
> generally are making decisions extremely fast.
Uniquely hospitable = easier in the US than anywhere else, Charlie :-)
> > The American army after the First World War was
> > essentially a shattered wreck with officers on the verge of
poverty
> > commanding men with little equipment and less training.
>
> That I didn't know. Recommend me a book on the period?
I mainly got a picture by reading biographies of Marshall, etc. Umm,
the two best Eisenhower biographies are by Stephen Ambrose and David
Eisenhower - both are excellent, although both are obviously somewhat
biased as well. Both, btw, absolutely demolish the pernicious fiction
that Eisenhower did little or nothing while he was President -
something that no serious historian believes anymore anyways, but an
image that nonetheless remains among the public, sadly. The book that
initially did that was Fred Greenstein's _The Hidden Hand Presidency_
which was the first to have access to the classified transcripts of
NSC meetings. One does have to wonder, however, at a political
climate where the man who organized the D-Day invasion was dismissed
as unintelligent while Adlai Stevenson, whose only known qualification
for intelligence was wearing glasses in public, was upheld as a
paragon of intellectual ability - this a man who died with _The Social
Register_ the only book by his bedside. I can't, offhand, think of a
single Marshall biography that I would recommend, but they're all good
because he was such a neat person. DB and I share our admiration for
Marshall as one of the most extraordinary men of the century.
> > That this
> > institution produced Marshall, Macarthur, Eisenhower, Patton, and
> > Bradley, among others, is nothing short of a miracle.
>
> Or maybe that adversity was the reason that they flourished? Must
remember
> to read more about the interwar period.
>
> Charlie
Maybe, but if I had to pick a single reason, it's because Marshall in
particular, and, to a lesser extent Macarthur as well, had a
phenomenal eye for talent and was able to spot promising officers and
convince them to stay in the Army. Any system can work if you've got
a George Marshall running it - but without that particular bit of good
luck, one wonders what would have happened.
********************Gautam "Ulysses" Mukunda**********************
* Harvard College Class of '01 *He either fears his fate too much*
* www.fas.harvard.edu/~mukunda * Or his deserts are small, *
* [EMAIL PROTECTED] *Who dares not put it to the touch*
* "Freedom is not Free" * To win or lose it all. *
******************************************************************
