slightly ruffled suit. a very determined walk. he was always having summer. and he always wanted to make things right. he understood. he understood that african-americans have so much, a sum much harder time than the white community. to get a free trial, to get access to a free trial. he was not soon as all the time. he fought against the prevailing view. i think that was one of the most important things about them. >> for more information on book tv recent visit to alexandria viejo and the many other cities visited by our local content vehicles, go to c-span.org / local content. .. didn't in-house

the most dramatic and well-known illustration of this have to do with other mathematicians and those in finland and washington dc who broke the enigma and

other access codes. the public bracket is hardly a household name in a small group of british and american scientists. it really turned the tide in the battle against the u-boats are not so well known at all. but there is contribution that is every bit as vital. not only in winning one of the most crucial battles in the war, but also for its lasting consequences in revolutionizing the way that military commanders think about it. in revolutionizing the way that quantitative analysis can be applied to a host of tactical problems in the business world and operational research or operations research. it is their story that i tried to tell. it was the one threat that

churchville wanted to use to bring britain to its knees. britain understand it on imports not only for oil, but just to stay alive. by the start of 1941, they had already reduced imports below the 31 million tons a year to maintain essential food supplies for the civilian population. the crunch of the whole war rests in the atlantic. the decision for 1941 lies upon the sea. churchville come after the war,

the battle of the atlantic was the dominating factor. never for one moment we forget that everything happening depended ultimately on this outcome. so in the spring of 1940. >> thank you. >> in the spring of 1940, 1941 -- churchill issued a totalitarian order to take the offensive against them. it was in this dire situation to see if he could come up with some ways of improving support

in locating and attacking the german submarines. it was one of the world's most prominent experimental figures. we had an extraordinary background. after the war, the navy decided that all of these cadets started at age 14, 818, graduated and went into the navy. but the navy had to rest this writing to the start of world war i. so they thought to make up for this, they would send them all to universities for six months just before they ground out the education. so within a few weeks of arriving there, he said one day

he wandered over one of the world's leading physics laboratories to see what it would look like. very shortly after that, he told the navy that he was leaving and he wanted to become a scientist. he never did receive his phd. but he quickly became one of the world's great scientists. he would win the nobel prize in physics in 1948. he was good looking and had a commanding presence. an extraordinary combination of hands-on ability and theoretical machinations. he had a great ability to conceive of a problem and write out a few lines of mathematics and carried these experiments

out and analyzed the results turkey was also one of a number of scientists in britain and in america that have been working hard behind the scenes in the 1930s to prepare for war and to try to make sure that the army and navy made full use of science when it came. he was frustrated by what he found to be the typical attitude of military commanders. more specifically that the only role of scientists was some new gadget or weapon or gizmo. but war itself, strategies and operations, it was a series of actions at a definite end.

the organization of the men who handle them are at least as much scientific problem as their counterparts. what he was arguing for is what would become the generation of operations research. it is a fundamental component of military thinking. something that everyone in the naval academy studies. and every student in business school. then it was revolutionary. military command, and art from experience and judgment and a bridle at the idea. several astonishing insights early on change their mind. the most erratic was a simple but important calculation of the scientists made showing that the

tactics were a perfectly sensible approach. navy commander actually had a seemingly reasonable calculation themselves. they knew how much time elapsed between the moment when they spotted u-boat. they knew how fast they could go. so they multiply. they knew it was about 45 seconds that it typically had been out of sight by the time it actually got in position to drop it. they figured u-boat with the 150 people at the service at that point. so they said, okay. that is the best average.

and the trouble was one that had been out of commission for five seconds also had time to take something out left to or right. so even though the charges were probably at the right depth on average, there were almost always wrong steps and missing targets. fewer than 1% of the u-boats are being successfully attacked. science has proposed an incredibly important change. they said change the setting from 150 feet to 25 feet. only attack countries that have been out of sight for less than

15 seconds and that would ensure that when they did carry out an attack, the target would be both, out the right step in the right place. the scientist calculated this would increase this from 1% to 10%. so we have this incredible new weapon. this is closer, it will increase by a factor of 10. it would have been astonishing. when the results were implemented, it was almost exactly this that occurred. it was astonishing. so when it did happen, these

results were undeniable. there is a transformation of almost complete ineffectiveness to the decisive battle of award-winning operation. by the summer of 1943 in ensure the success the following year. repeatedly a team of scientists produced equally prodigious result in doubling and tripling the existing weapons. fairly simple analyses and asking the right questions that often been made by history and

circumstance, rather than regular nonsense. most powerful piece of technology was at the back of the envelope. one time they rode out a few lines of mathematics that led to another dramatic jump in the effectiveness of the campaign. he was visiting british command oversees. a big surprise to britain. they were also tracking the position of u-boats. they mostly traveled on the surface. he knew how many hours of the patrol planes were flying. so here's able to figure out how many u-boats should've been spotted. and he compare them compared them to the actual numbers that were being spotted. they were only finding a third

or fourth the number. so apparently they saw the coaching patrol planes, giving them time to dodge an escape. there were all sorts of fanciful ideas that were proposed. but the answer can be very simple. one day an air force officer says, well, what color are they? most of them are black. they were not bombers and land is a very good color if you don't seen my searchlight at night. it's the worst color if you don't want to be seen against a cloudy sky and the planet. repainting the underside of the

wings white was another problem. again, imagine if you were a commander to produce the equivalent effect simply by analysis asking the right questions. it wasn't really the case of a bunch of brilliant scientists showing how stupid the military commanders were, as much as it might have sounded like that. most of the time it turned out that the military was during things. but by going back to square one, they turned up small points that have been overlooked.

one mit physicist, he wrote the textbook where he chew on a lot of experiences on the war. many everyday tactical problems. it was a trivial but good illustration of what operations could be done. one was out in the field visiting a base. fairly rough conditions. after every meal, there is a huge line of soldiers. what was going on as they had for watchdogs.

so he timed how long it took each one. and he noticed it took three times as long. so he finally said, if you had three are watching and one for rinsing, it would be things out. that is not diminishing returns, but increasing them. because lines tend to actually have a bottleneck. if you can find it and remove it, it is often miraculous results. another important illustration was a were carried out by celso gordon. he's a very eccentric geneticist

he managed to triple the number of flying hours at the air squadrons were able to carry out. not having a single airplane or a man to the ground crews. looking where we were in routine maintenance operations. looking at what components happen most often is. one commander who is asked about the work, he should exactly what the scientist were up to when it came to traditional military attitude. he said gordon, [inaudible] [applause] >> it was an extraordinarily diverse set of men and women who made up the anti-submarine

operational research facility. one expert, as described by a colleague, is actually the only one who had any military background at all. but they shared was a scientific mindset and no preconceived notions. it was also crucial that they were outsiders. only the results mattered. they advise one of the colleagues turn it down. he said it was far better to remain a civilian city can talk back to the them. but i think that this is quite important factor.

they could associate with those who really know what is going on. one recall how the colleagues got most of their information by hanging out at the pub. which led them to conclude 90% of operational research is here. every bit as fascinating as the technical and scientific views. it took an incredible amount of this to obtain permission in the first place to be embedded with operational squadrons and to see for themselves how things work

and be able to ask questions. his group was not going to at the reputation at stake for incremental improvement. statistical analysis to prove that they had actually made things better. they were never going to persuade the admirals and generals. they said they had to concentrate on the things that were so dramatic that they spoke for themselves. in fact, they did in changing the color of the camouflage and these were dramatic examples that convinced disbelieving officers and civilian officers did have something to offer. likewise, they needed to have a

natural tendency of those who sit around and watch lies in about a problem. he told his colleagues that this was not at all the situation. their job was to improve things if they could and if not, keep quiet. on the american side, i think it showed an arguably more skilled understanding of bureaucracy. it required everyone have the same standing instruction. because we have to get permission to talk to the operational squadron and be able to talk to everyone to gather the facts. but we can't be seen as a spy that is going to tell on them but they are doing something

wrong. in the credit has to go to the commanding officer. we report to the commanding officer. and they said don't ever try to claim credit, even when you deserve it. because our job is not to run this ourselves. well, i wanted to mention just one other point. i definitely am writing the story of the nerds of world war ii. i was not expecting this, but it was a very striking fact that emerged. many of the scientists pioneered operations research.

most basic scientists were actually as a matter of principle, not political at all. and it was said that it would harm their objectivity if they were involved in politics and should not be involved in politics in any way. two things changed that. the first was the great depression. blackett was one of many scientists in the 1930s who is furiously frustrated.

>> understanding that is being made. miserable and the working population. that was particularly true in britain. >> it was a worldwide phenomenon. they continued the same slump that had been affecting the british economy since the end of the first world war. they concluded the rational science and society. scientists have far more than

any other segment of society. so sooner than most are very aware of nazi germany, beginning with the persecution and dismissal of all scientists. he was involved with many scientists during this time and finding positions for refugees in universities in america. but i think it was far less important than the brilliance, commitment, and pretty fearless. the scientists would who would be involved in this effort, including this year, physics and medicine and what they fundamentally showed is that even in something as uncertain and tradition bound as a

scientific thinking it was crucial, the official history of this to the war effort as observed that there was a fundamentally romantic conception of this. even magical thinking. >> there were generals but failed to produce any operational research comparable to the allied development. if they had, they probably would have won the submarine campaign and the war. thank you very much. thank you for coming. i would be delighted to answer any questions, and it has been a pleasure. [applause] >> if you do have questions, get your questions heard and recorded.

>> how did you research these topics? >> there was a very interesting array of sources available. i went to london and spent fascinating days looking at papers of the laurel society. the public record office in london have a lot of the reports by the operational research group, a lot of memos. all the way up and it's interesting. churchill had a very strange relationship with science. he also got carried away with these ideas of his, which were a terrible waste of time and effort.

saying that i understand this will be able to cripple the number of flying hours. it is very interesting. on the american side, a lot of the reports and all of them are dead now. but in the 1970s, some of the professional societies did some oral histories. a few nights work. you mentioned one of the view important aspect was part of the

military. >> yes, you know, it has been interesting. the entire society is mobilized. people who have no interest in a career in the military. people who are almost the opposite at the time they would have a military career. it was part of their personality. there was a sense of urgency. there is a sense of breaking the rules when necessary.

improvisation. that was truth in the code breaking effort. true in special operations and espionage. and i think that on the one hand, we can say it is unaccomplished meant that scientific understanding is second nature. so that is good. but we have lost something as well. the greatest minds -- the greatest legal minds and mathematical minds. i'm not saying that we have lost something. but they are part of the changes being made. i tried to follow through.

so it was a great success. but you saw a lot of low are researchers that were employees of the navy. giving the answers that they wanted. it's a very interesting question. there was an nsa director and it was right at the time that the wall fell in berlin and all kinds of new thinking about things. and he said we ought to have the ceremony. we won the cold war and started a completely new agency from scratch.

he was pointing to the same thing. bureaucracy kind of finesses themselves and so forth. >> how quickly after the war did operations research enter the industry? >> it was very quickly decided that there would be this product. it was very much focused on civilian problems and everything from scheduling firefighters, work shifts, water flows, to

problems of managing bottlenecks and we were aware of the larger possibilities. >> we are going to have scientific socialism. of course it did not work out that way. the economy is vastly more complex than that in the war against the u-boats, everyone agreed with the measure was. how many merchant ships to save and how many sunk.

it depends on your political views. certainly in terms of a discipline could be applied very quickly. >> the reason i ask is is one i work in 1953, what i was doing was time and motion studies. >> yes, you can get into all that sort of thing. the studies went back earlier. i think they tended to have a narrower focus. he's making broader claims for how much this could be applied.

particularly analyzing workloads and analyzing ways to bottleneck . i think they were probably right. >> okay. there is one annoyed british bureaucrats around this time. we are making this big deal and there needs to be ordinary commonsense things. but i think they're just getting back to the anti-submarine story. they really did something fundamentally interesting, which was to say the basic question

about strategy tactics and operations are important to scientific analysis. it was a weird revolution. >> i wonder if you research came across a guy named johnny walker >> well, no. >> who was he? >> he was one of the most successful anti-submarine guys. >> he went there as a maverick. some people wanted to sack him a few times. >> well, thank you very much. [applause]

>> for more information, visit the author's website. >> we have allowed a human rights nightmare jerker on our watch. in the years since doctor king's death, our vast system of racial and social control has emerged from the ashes of slavery and jim crow law. the system of mass incarceration and no doubt has doctor king turning in his grave today. the mass incarceration of people of color in the united states is paramount to a new caste system, one that shuttles are young people. it has a permanent second-class status, nearly as effectively as the earlier assistance of racial and social control.

it is, in my view, the moral equivalent of jim crow. on tuesday, march 26, join us live for twitter and facebook. one prosecutors crusade against crime and corruption is next on booktv. he sat down with us in virginia during our recent visit. >> you're sitting in the conference room of the arlington county sheriff. this is the shotgun that was used by the prosecutor in the early 20th century. a guy by the name of crandal mackey. the selected as the commonwealth

attorney and he conducted a series of raids where he shut down brothels and saloons and all kinds of dangerous places. i've used this shotgun when he conducted those roots. crandal mackey was from south carolina. his father was a prominent judge and author in south carolina. he moved up here to be a lawyer. then he got involved in the politics in the northern virginia area. what is significant about this time is that he was part of a progressive wing of the democratic party at that time. which was still kind of between a more conservative faction and a more progressive faction. this is at the time when the only real politics had to do with which faction was sort of in charge. so the conservative wing of the party was run by political machine that was operated by a state senator by the name of

thomas. crandal mackey first became interested in politics in the early 19 hundreds. and he got involved with this group of progressives that were trying to take over state government. one of his first major campaigns was the gubernatorial election of 1902. he went on to support the candidate at that time. his name is andrew montague. he launched the political career of crandal mackey. he first wanted to go after a saloons and he wanted to shut them down. but he had lots of resistance from the sheriff who wanted nothing to do with this. so he had to put together his own supporters without much help from the ship.

trying to get people interested. so the elected prosecutor is a really interesting piece in history. it is and has been passed down over the years and it is the property of the arlington national historical society. it was displayed here in the sheriff's office. that story has their own museum and you can learn the history of arlington. they thought it might be a liability to have a weapon and so they loaned it to the sheriff in arlington county. it has been in possession ever since. the modern-day prosecutor was a

little upset about this. one of his chief enemies was the sheriff and the modern-day prosecutor thought that the shotgun should be part of the prosecutor not to share. today, the name of crandal mackey has been largely forgotten. one of them is here. also there is the crandal mackey park. the area that it isn't is where all of these saloons and brothels used to be.

including someone who played a critical role in creating the modern virginia. the buildings, lots of people, it's not like the ramshackle sort of muddy streets. today you could walk around the streets and i think it would be part of his great legacy. >> the british had a large impact on the war of 1812. >> coming up next on booktv

denver brunsman and his book "the evil necessity: british naval impressment in the eighteenth-century atlantic world." >> the british empire in the 18th century was really a maritime empire. they depended heavily on trade and the various colonial territories. we are especially concentrated in the atlantic. the only way that they could resupply those ships, in that way america was introduced to the underside of this british

system. in many ways, they benefit from and what was being involved in being a bigger subject. it was always one of the most unpopular parts of the british empire. one of the things that we forget that americans today is that many love to be part of this. it was something of an aberration. but there were these issues that emerged early on. during the american revolutionary era, it was incredibly unpopular in the 1760s leading up to be one of

the grievances against george the iii. he was captured by the british. so they really had no choice. the american revolution ended in 1783. a decade later, the french revolutionary and napoleonic wars, those wars lasted from 1793 to 1816. and the british navy needed more in the final years of the war, we couldn't really spare anyone.

to check to see if anyone was on board. one part would be the american merchant ships. this was seen as a violation of american sovereignty. they all rejected this is something that was in violation of the rights. the british navy needed more than what was available at the time. we worked on merchant ships and naval ships. in times of war, with the

british navy did was use a forcible adjustment. which was actually legal to apprehend man and put him on ships. because the american colonies were members of the british empire. that meant that american sailors also could be impressed. he was essentially on that since the war ended. those are the only three ways out of this situation. it was often confined slavery in its own time. the systems were different, but they have some similarities. we have some first-hand accounts. they often liken themselves to

enslaved africans. the really important difference is that slavery was permanent, hereditary, and it was passed down to following generations. and of course, there was fuel, very few benefits. to then say that they went three, the single most importantly to tell the difference is we have amazing records and they saw freedom in the british navy. the way that indentured

servitude worked as a laborer, and the cost of the voyage, the person pledged to work for 47 years. ideally, a person had some benefits. in my book, i compare it to indentured servitude and slavery and we often think in the age of enlightenment and liberty and those things. but it was also that of servitude. more people cross the atlantic ocean to come to the western hemisphere. there is some condition that make it real. we don't have exact figures about the number of men who were impressed. whenever a person has his name

written down, the exact circumstances were clear. so i have estimates for the number of those that were half and two thirds for any given list. even those numbers, we can safely say that about a quarter of a million during the 18th century, it makes it the second most common form of forced labor, forced service after slavery. they are all volunteers when they find out that they can't get away. and i thought that he meant that he was offered a bounty if you'd like to take it. if he took it, he was automatically a volunteer who wouldn't take the bounty.

one problem is that at that point, there was no legal recourse to get out of the navy. there were certain ways to create this league. maybe could only and press them in this way. if a person could show that they had some other occupations, and they could go. one way this was happening was family and so this institution affected a lot of people. other relatives would petition the british admiral to put them out. another thing they could do is file for habeas corpus. at that point the navy would have to show that this person

was a failure and he belonged in the navy. there is always a certain amount of controversy. men got out and served that way. there are a lot of legends. >> if you accepted a sharing that was putting a glass, you are saying that these very kind glasses are glass.

>> one of these takes place in november and 1747. sailing from canada to the caribbean. they stopped over in boston. like so many british commanders, they need in men. they're about 50 men in this explodes in protest. because there were some unwritten rules. it does not take massachusetts for granted. so the crowd rose up and

captured officers. and took over the town for three days. they threatened to fire on the town if they didn't release the officers. well, at the time, there was a young person who is 25 years old . it was justified. it helps you to be a wellspring of ideas. it is really kind of an amazing

moment and it happened in the early 1770s. the british navy began demand for a possible war over the flock when islands. and they wanted to explore whether this was actually legal. so we have records of benjamin franklin educating himself and reading one of the rulings that says it was legal. he wrote on the margins of this all kinds of sarcastic comments against the whole british system of government. so his solution was that judges

and british naval officers and even the king should be liable to that. that was his solution. almost at the exact same time, george iii was reviewing the same legal decisions and came under completely opposite conclusions. he decided that it was legal. that the service should be commended when he needed them. and this is a case of difference in style and substance as well. and making up his own solutions. george three very diligently had recorded as legal ruling in his own hand line by line. he reached the conclusion that he was happy with. there's a lot of lessons that we could take from how it works

during the 18th century. part of the book, britain found itself in a compromising position. in order to establish and continue to world dominance that it had, in essence it had to violate some of its own principles. the british dissociated liberty in the 18th century. so when they resorted to this, the system that was so controversial and for so many, the opposite of liberty. they violated one of the primary ideals. all societies are thinking about what they value the most. and what is necessary for them to continue their way of life and whether it is worth it. >> for more information on booktv's