The East-West Dimension

In the midst of a discussion about the subservience of historians to the ‘mainstream’ opinions, Robert Ammons, publisher of Psychological Reports, suggested a series of articles on Quantitative History that would continue McClelland’s tradition of objective, quantitative analysis of historical events. This idea caught on and soon we were joined on the other side of the Atlantic by Rudolf Zucha, editor of the Zeitschrift fur Sozialpsychologie. This happened in the Spring of 1975 and our cooperation lasted for the rest of the century. Its results are presented in this book, based on empirical research into significant social events with focus on the preventable causes of wars. In the nuclear age there is no question more important than this one, which increased in urgency when the nuclear power of the most bellicose nation on Earth fell into the hands of religious fanatics, serving interests of a foreign theocracy.