The first-ever popular history of the Rand Corporation, written with full access to its archives, Soldiers of Reason is a page-turning chronicle of the rise of the secretive think tank that has been the driving force behind American government for sixty years. Born in the wake of World War II as an idea factory to advise the air force on how to wage and win wars, RAND quickly became the creator of Americas anti-Soviet nuclear strategy.A magnet for the best and the brightest, its ranks included Cold War luminaries such as Albert Wohlstetter, Bernard Brodie, and Herman Kahn, who arguably saved us from nuclear annihilation and unquestionably created Eisenhowers military-industrial complex. In the Kennedy era,RAND analysts became McNamaras Whiz Kids and their theories of rational warfare steered our conduct in Vietnam. Those same theories drove our invasion of Iraq forty-five years later, championed by Rand affiliated actors such as Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and Zalmay Khalilzad. But RANDs greatest contribution might be its least known: rational choice theory, a model explaining all human behavior through self-interest. Through it Rand sparked the Reagan-led transformation of our social and economic system but also unleashed a resurgence of precisely the forces whose existence it denied religion, patriotism, tribalism. With Soldiers of Reason, Alex Abella has rewritten the history of Americas last half century and cast a new light on our problematic present.

作者：（美國）亞曆剋斯·阿貝拉（Alex Abella） 譯者：梁筱蕓 張小燕

亞曆剋斯·阿貝拉（Alex Abella），美國《洛杉磯時報》專欄作傢，齣版過《影子敵人：希特勒針對美國的秘密恐怖分子計劃》《終極行動》《偉大的美國》和《聖徒之死》等多部著作。