Download or read book COLD WAR LABORATORY written by Martin J. Collins and published by Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press. This book was released on 2002-11-17 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1946, before the start of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the Army Air Forces established Project RAND -- a groundbreaking 'think tank' designed to link leaders in the military and aircraft industry. Modern war was now total war, a contest between entire societies, and demanded the commitment of peacetime preparation. Martin J. Collins examines the critical years of this experiment through an evolving cast of key individuals and investigates in-depth the scientific and social birth of systems analysis.