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Call for papers for the International Committee for the History of Technology’s 43 rd  Annual Meeting in Porto, Portugal, 26-30 July 2016 Technology, Innovation, and Sustainability: Historical and Contemporary Narratives Deadline for proposals is 25 January 2016 Innovation and sustainability have become key words of our everyday life, extending from political and economic discourse to teaching curricula and from the lay public to academia. However, the use of these terms is often abstract and simplistic, ignoring the density of their interrelationships in different geographic, historical and civilizational contexts, and the  boomerang  character of today’s world. The 43 rd  ICOHTEC meeting  aims at addressing this complex relationship by encouraging papers that contribute to a deeper understanding of the multilayer cultural and material built meaning of innovation and sustainability and on the various roles played by ...

Session S25: Cities, Science and Satire: Satirical Representations of Urban Modernity and Scientific and Technological Innovation in the Public Space 13 th Conference of the European Association for Urban History, Helsinki, August 24-27, 2016 Deadline: October 31, 2015 Session Chairs: Markian Prokopovych ( markian.prokopovych@univie.ac.at ) and Katalin Straner ( stranerk@ceu.edu ) European urban spaces underwent fundamental transformation due to unprecedented scientific and technological modernisation as well as the emergence of the urban press from the eighteenth century onwards. In the course of just a few decades, modern roads and transportation connected previously distant cities as well as city districts to each other and to the city centre; street lightning made evenings safer and easier to navigate; and the provision of fresh water and canalisation prevented the spread of previously devastating epidemics and changed approaches to urban and personal hy...

Sarah Bridger. Scientists at War: The Ethics of Cold War Weapons Research. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015. 368 pp. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-674-73682-5. Reviewed by Audra J. Wolfe Published on H-Diplo (October, 2015) Commissioned by Seth Offenbach In the spring of 2015, a group of human rights activists released a report alleging that the American Psychological Association (APA) had aided the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in developing torture policies that would withstand legal scrutiny.[1] The most explosive disclosure revealed that government psychologists and defense contractors had been involved in establishing the APA’s guidelines for ethical participation in interrogation programs. Although the ensuing outrage was decidedly of its moment—deeply mired in post-hoc assessments of President George W. Bush’s global war on terror—this was not the first time that American scientific institutions confronted their role in military operations. Sara...