Author: Tom Shachtman

Tom Shachtman is the author of more than a dozen non-fiction books including Gentlemen Scientists and Revolutionaries (St. Martin's Press, 2014), Rumspringa: To Be Or Not To Be Amish (North Point Press, 2007), and The Phony War, 1939-1940 (Harper & Row, 1982), and co-author of another dozen. He has also written documentaries seen on ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, BBC, and in theaters. His most recent award was from the American Institute of Physics for the script of the two-hour Nova broadcast, Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold, based on his book of that name. He has lectured at Harvard, New York University, Stanford, Georgia Tech, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, the Huntington Library, and the Smithsonian Institution.

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Economics Posted on

Tapping America’s Wealth to Fund the Revolution: Two Good Ideas that Went Awry

“Unless some great and capital change suddenly takes place,” Gen. George Washington wrote from Valley Forge on December 23, 1777,[1] to Henry Laurens, the recently-appointed president of the Continental Congress, “the Army must inevitably be reduced to one or the other of these three things. Starve—dissolve—or disperse, in order to obtain subsistence.” A week later, […]

by Tom Shachtman