Although America's universities have become the envy of the world for their creative energy
and their production of transformative knowledge, few understand how and why they have
become preeminent. This groundbreaking book traces the origins and the evolution of our
great universities. It shows how they grew out of sleepy colleges at the turn of the twentieth
century into powerful institutions that continue to generate new industries and advance our
standard of living. Far from inevitable, this transformation was enabled by a highly …

V Vhen most educated Americans think about our great universities, they probably don't
think about the origins of lasers, FM radio, magnetic resonance imaging, global positioning
systems, barcodes, the Google algorithm, the fetal monitor, the nicotine patch, antibiotics, the
Richter scale, buckyballs and nanotechnology, the discovery of the insulin gene, the
invention of the computer, or the development of bioengineering through the discovery of
recombinant DNA. Nor do they think about improved weather forecasting, cures for …