“Few would quarrel with Machiavelli’s observation that in order to know what is going to happen, one must know what has happened. But the lessons of history can be obscuring and misleading as well as illuminating and orienting.”
History, in other words, is important but capable of being all things to all men, in a manner of speaking.
These are the opening words of Professor Wolfram F. Hanrieder’s (UC, Santa Barbara) December 1987 review in The American Political Science Review of Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May. Neustadt and May make their goal very clear in the Preface’s opening line: “This book is addressed to those who govern–or hope to do so.” They intended their book to be a text for government leaders in the proper use of history as one decision-making tool among all of those available. Did it work? Hard to say unless someone manages to find a way to poll the apparatchiks who’ve used it.
Search at JSTOR: http://www.jstor.orgor read the review: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1962619 (If you don’t have access to JSTOR, don’t worry. There are plenty of reviews of this book out there.)
Get your own at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Time-Uses-History-Decision-Makers/dp/0029227917
