McCURDY, Howard E(arl) 1941-

PERSONAL: Born December 18, 1941, in Atascadero, CA; son of Howard E. (a chemist) and Jo (an office manager; maiden name, Test) McCurdy; married Margaret M. Hurley (a teacher), June 27, 1970 (divorced, 1999). Education: Attended Oregon State University, 1959-61; University of Washington, Seattle, B.A., 1962, M.A., 1965; Cornell University, Ph.D., 1969.

ADDRESSES: Office—School of Government and Public Affairs, American University, Washington, DC 20016. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: American University, Washington, DC, assistant professor, 1968-72, associate professor, 1972-78, professor of public administration, 1978, director of public administration, 1976-80, director of key executive program, 1978-81, chair of the department of public administration, 2002—. Conductor of study on administration of national park system in Kenya, 1975; Fulbright-Hays lecturer in management and public administration at University of Zambia, 1978. Media consultant on public policy; has appeared on television shows MacNeil-Lehrer Report, Firing Line, and Newsmaker Saturday.

MEMBER: American Society for Public Administration.

AWARDS, HONORS: Henry Adams prize, Society for History in the Federal Government, 1994, for Inside NASA: High Technology and Organizational Change in the U. S. Space Program; Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award, American Astronautical Association, 1999, for Space and the American Imagination; Distinguished Research Award, National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administrations/American Society of Public Administration, 2001.

WRITINGS:

Public Administration: A Bibliography, College of Public Affairs, American University (Washington, DC), 1972.

An Insider's Guide to the Capitol, College of Public Affairs, American University (Washington, DC), 1977.

Public Administration: A Synthesis, Cummings (Menlo Park, CA), 1977.

Public Administration: A Bibliographic Guide to the Literature, Dekker (New York, NY), 1986.

The Space Station Decision: Incremental Politics and Technological Choice, John Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1990.

Inside NASA: High Technology and Organizational Change in the U.S. Space Program, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1993.

Space and the American Imagination, Smithsonian Institution Press (Washington, DC), 1997.

(Editor, with Roger D. Launius) Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 1997.

Faster, Better, Cheaper: Low-Cost Innovation in the U.S. Space Program, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 2001.

(With Roger D. Launius) Imagining Space: Achievements, Predictions, Possibilities: 1950-2050, Chronicle Books (San Francisco, CA), 2001.

Contributor to business and public administration journals.

SIDELIGHTS: Several of public affairs expert Howard E. McCurdy's public-policy volumes are aimed at the U.S. space program. In the award-winning Inside NASA: High Technology and Organizational Change in the U.S. Space Program, the author tracks the National Aeronautics and Space Administration from its early triumphs, including the first moon landing in 1969, through the years of criticism and scrutiny following the explosion of space-shuttle Challenger in 1986. Using archival evidence and interviews, Mc-Curdy investigates how the performance of the space program compares to NASA's organizational culture. What he found was an agency that was founded on research-and-development principles. "The combination of youthful talent, a supportive political environment, and the historical opportunity to invent exciting technology fostered an agency that valued inquiry, open communication, attention to detail, honesty, idealism, and romance," as Erwin C. Hargrove wrote in an American Political Science Review article.

But after the initial excitement of the moon landings, public interest in space exploration waned. Political support declined, and NASA became what Hargrove called "an operating agency, offering less challenge to its engineers and more opportunities to outside contractors." According to Texas Monthly's Gregory Curtis, "even the simplest components, those NASA might once have designed and built itself, are now wastefully contracted to outside suppliers, because . . . supervising outside contracts is really all today's NASA employees know how to do." Using NASA as his example, McCurdy "concludes that highperformance bureaucratic cultures are inherently unstable," noted Hargrove, who called the author's efforts "extraordinarily comprehensive."

McCurdy's 1997 book Space and the American Imagination, "is guaranteed to disturb technophiles and policy wonks," commented a Publishers Weeklycontributor. This book examines how the space program is perceived by the public; in NASA's case, as the author writes, "Advocates took fantastic ideas and laid upon them images already rooted in the American culture, such as the myth of the frontier." The early space program thrived, McCurdy continues, "not because of its technical superiority but because it aroused the imaginations of people who viewed it." Public attitudes were further influenced by the 1957 launch of Sputnik; Russia's technological excellence was often promoted as a threat to U.S. security. The author "criticizes the manipulation of public opinion though outrageous cultural images suggesting that America faced nuclear annihilation if it let the former Soviet Union maintain the upper-hand in space exploration," wrote Norman Weinstein. In his article assessing Space and the American Imagination for MIT's Technology review, Weinstein suggested that from the Sputnik chapters to the its conclusion, the book "sheds the trappings of an academic study and becomes a sermon attacking the unsavory aspects of romantic imagination pertaining to space." Library Journal contributor Thomas Frieling called Space and the American Imagination a "masterly study" of the subject.

In 2002 McCurdy and coauthor Roger Launius—chief historian for NASA—produced Imagining Space: Achievements, Predictions, Possibilities: 1950-2050, a work for general readers that uses "engaging text sprinkled with over 150 archival photos and illustrations" to tell its story, according to Astronomy reviewer Andrew Fazekas. The authors, Fazekas continued, "give an all-embracing view of space flight, covering not only space exploration, but also its commercialization and role in warfare."

McCurdy told CA: "I would like to see my professional colleagues break away from their conventional views of public administration as policy-making, staffing, and budgeting and acquire a broader view of the types of management problems encountered in government agencies and the fields of study that contribute solutions to these problems. The generalist approach to public administration is going to be outstripped by the contributions made by more technical and sophisticated fields of study and we had better be prepared to absorb these contributions into our profession or face the prospect of losing our relevance in the eyes of students and public managers."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

McCurdy, Howard, Space and the American Imagination, Smithsonian Institution Press (Washington, DC), 1997.

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, June, 1994, review of Inside NASA: High Technology and Organizational Change in the U.S. Space Program, p. 996; October, 1998, review of Space and the American Imagination, p. 1351.

American Political Science Review, June, 1994, Erwin C. Hargrove, review of Inside NASA, p. 473.

American Scientist, July, 1992, review of The Space Station Decision: Incremental Politics and Technological Choice, p. 403.

Astronomy, February, 2002, Andrew Fazekas, review of Imagining Space: Achievements, Predictions, Possibilities: 1950-2050, p. 94.

Choice, May, 1991, review of The Space Station Decision, p. 1511; September, 1993, review of Inside NASA, p. 150.

Chronicle of Higher Education, December 19, 1990, review of The Space Station Decision, p. A10.

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, June, 1998, James Schwoch, review of Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership, p. 295.

Isis, September, 1999, review of Space and the American Imagination, p. 635.

Journal of Politics, February, 1995, review of Inside NASA, p. 249.

Library Journal, November 15, 1997, review of Space and the American Imagination, p. 74.

London Review of Books, March 5, 1998, review of Space and the American Imagination, p. 13.

Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January, 1999, review of Space and the American Imagination, p. 46.

MIT's Technology Review, March-April, 1998, Norman Weinstein, review of Space and the American Imagination, p. 65.

Natural History, February, 1998, review of Space and the American Imagination, p. 17.

Nature, June 3, 1993, review of Inside NASA, p. 407; March 12, 1998, review of Space and the American Imagination, p. 143.

New England Quarterly, December, 1998, review of Space and the American Imagination, p. 655.

New Scientist, April 11, 1998, review of Space and the American Imagination, p. 48.

New Technical Books, July, 1993, review of Inside NASA, p. 655.

Publishers Weekly, October 27, 1997, review of Space and the American Imagination, p. 60.

SciTech Book News, January, 1991, review of The Space Station Decision, p. 32; May, 1993, review of Inside NASA, p. 37.

Sky & Telescope, May, 1991, review of The Space Station Decision, p. 502; August, 1993, review of Inside NASA, p. 56.

Technology and Culture, April, 1992, review of The Space Station Decision, p. 385.

Texas Monthly, September, 1994, Gregory Curtis, review of Inside NASA, p. 5.

Wall Street Journal, November 12, 1990, review of The Space Station Decision, p. A12.