W10 Eventful Years is the title of the 1947 Encyclopædia Britannica compilation, spanning ten years, 1937 through 1946. The books were commissioned and edited by Walter Yust, the editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica and were partly based on the Encyclopedia's annual Year Book.
WAcross the Wide Missouri, With an Account of the Discovery of the Miller Collection is a 1947 book by American historian Bernard DeVoto. It is the second volume of a trilogy that includes The Year of Decision (1942) and The Course of Empire (1952).
WAdministrative Behavior: a Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organization is a book written by Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001). It asserts that "decision-making is the heart of administration, and that the vocabulary of administrative theory must be derived from the logic and psychology of human choice", and it attempts to describe administrative organizations "in a way that will provide the basis for scientific analysis". The first edition was published in 1947; the second, in 1957; the third, in 1976; and the fourth, in 1997. As summarized in a 2001 obituary of Simon, the book "reject[ed] the notion of an omniscient 'economic man' capable of making decisions that bring the greatest benefit possible and substitut[ed] instead the idea of 'administrative man' who 'satisfices—looks for a course of action that is satisfactory'". Administrative Behavior laid the foundation for the economic movement known as the Carnegie School.
WBehold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion, a book by Alan Watts (1915–1973), was first published in 1947 by John Murray Publishers (London). This book is a reworking of Watts' Episcopal divinity degree thesis. Its importance lies partly in its exposition of Watts' earliest attempt to reconcile traditional Anglican theology with a mystical, Buddhist based approach, but also as a personal expression of the mystical experience.
WThe Book of Azariah is a book by the Italian author and Roman Catholic mystic Maria Valtorta. It was written in 1946 and 1947 in Viareggio, Italy, where Valtorta was bedridden for several decades. The text is based on a series of "dictations" which Valtorta attributed to her guardian angel, Azariah.
WCommunitas: Means of Livelihood and Ways of Life is a 1947 book on community and city planning by Percival and Paul Goodman. The book is divided into ‘A manual of modern plans’ reviewing the conceptual history of twentieth-century planning and ‘Three community paradigm’, a series of utopias proposing answers to the central question of the book: ‘How to find the right relations between means and ends?’
WThe Destiny of The Mother Church, by Bliss Knapp is a book published by Christian Science Publishing Society in 1991. Knapp and his parents, Ira O. and Flavia Stickney Knapp, all knew Mary Baker Eddy. His parents were students of hers and his father was one of the original members of the Board of Directors of The Mother Church. Until 1991, the book was repeatedly rejected for publication by the Christian Science Board of Directors because of the depiction of Eddy as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy and equating her with Christ Jesus, a position which Eddy considered blasphemous. Eddy identified the woman in the Book of Revelation not as a person, but as "generic man". Destiny's publication caused divisions within the church, including several resignations of prominent church employees. Critics claimed that the failure of the church's then-recent television venture, which had cost the church several hundred million dollars, had motivated the Board's reversal on publishing Knapp's book. Knapp, his wife and her sister left wills that granted bequests totalling over $100 million promised to the church if the book were to be published. The wills set a time limit of 20 years for the book to be published, otherwise the bequests were to be divided between Stanford University and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the church would receive nothing. The 1973 death of Knapp's wife set the date of the time limit to May 1993.
WDialectic of Enlightenment is a work of philosophy and social criticism written by Frankfurt School philosophers Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. The text, published in 1947, is a revised version of what the authors originally had circulated among friends and colleagues in 1944 under the title of Philosophical Fragments.
WDiary of a Man in Despair is a journal written by the German writer Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen during the 1930s and 1940s. It expresses his passionate opposition to Adolf Hitler and Nazism. It was originally published in 1947, but received little recognition. It has since been republished in English and has become regarded as a classic statement about Nazi Germany. The New York Times said the book is stunning to read because, in this journal, invective achieves the level of art and hatred achieves a tragic grandeur.
WThe Diary of a Young Girl, also known as The Diary of Anne Frank, is a book of the writings from the Dutch-language diary kept by Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The family was apprehended in 1944, and Anne Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. The diary was retrieved by Miep Gies, who gave it to Anne's father, Otto Frank, the family's only known survivor, just after the war was over. The diary has since been published in more than 60 languages. First published under the title Het Achterhuis. Dagboekbrieven 14 Juni 1942 – 1 Augustus 1944 by Contact Publishing in Amsterdam in 1947, the diary received widespread critical and popular attention on the appearance of its English language translation Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Doubleday & Company and Vallentine Mitchell in 1952. Its popularity inspired the 1955 play The Diary of Anne Frank by the screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, which they adapted for the screen for the 1959 movie version. The book is included in several lists of the top books of the 20th century.
WEclipse of Reason is a 1947 book by Max Horkheimer, in which the author discusses how the Nazis were able to project their agenda as "reasonable", but also identifies the pragmatism of John Dewey as problematic, due to his emphasis on the instrumental dimension of reasoning.
WEighteen Years in Prison is a Japanese autobiographical book by Kyuichi Tokuda and Yoshio Shiga.
WEscape to the Hills is a memoir by James and Ethel Chapman and published in 1947.
WEthik in der Schauweise der Wissenschaften vom Menschen und von der Gesellschaft is a book by German sociologist and economist Leopold von Wiese which has first been published in 1947 at A. Francke AG. It contains a typology of ethics, opposing individual to social ethics. The book rounded up a bunch of Leopold von Wiese's writings "which are intrinsically linked", including Gedanken über Menschlichkeit (1915), Homo sum: Gedanken zu einer zusammenfassenden Anthropologie (1940), and, finally, die Ethik in der Schauweise der Wissenschaften vom Menschen und von der Gesellschaft.
WThe Everglades: River of Grass is a non-fiction book written by Marjory Stoneman Douglas in 1947. Published the same year as the formal opening of Everglades National Park, the book was a call to attention about the degrading quality of life in the Everglades and remains an influential book on nature conservation as well as a reference for information on South Florida. It was used as recently as 2007 by The New York Times.
WThe Evolution of Naval Weapons is a United States government textbook by L. Sprague de Camp. It was first published in a 53-page edition by the Training Activity section of the Bureau of Naval Personnel in August 1947 as NAVPERS 91066. A 1949 edition of 67 pages was designated NAVPERS 91066-A. The work was credited to the Bureau rather than de Camp. The 1947 edition was reproduced from a mixture of standard sized typed and mimeographed sheets, and was stapled between blue paper covers. The 1949 edition was printed, with the illustrations integrated with the text.
WFearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake is a 1947 book by Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye whose subject is the work of English poet and visual artist William Blake. The book has been hailed as one of the most important contributions to the study of William Blake and one of the first that embarked on the interpretation of many of Blake's most obscure works. As Frye himself acknowledges, Blake's work is not to be deciphered but interpreted and seen within its specific historical and social contexts.
WFoundations of Economic Analysis is a book by Paul A. Samuelson published in 1947 by Harvard University Press. It is based on Samuelson's 1941 doctoral dissertation at Harvard University. The book sought to demonstrate a common mathematical structure underlying multiple branches of economics from two basic principles: maximizing behavior of agents and stability of equilibrium as to economic systems. Among other contributions, it advanced the theory of index numbers and generalized welfare economics. It is especially known for definitively stating and formalizing qualitative and quantitative versions of the "comparative statics" method for calculating how a change in any parameter affects an economic system. One of its key insights about comparative statics, called the correspondence principle, states that stability of equilibrium implies testable predictions about how the equilibrium changes when parameters are changed.
WFreud: His Life and His Mind is a 1947 biography of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, by Helen Walker Puner. The book was reprinted in 1959 with a new foreword by the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm. The work was praised by Fromm, but has also received criticism from scholars.
WFrom Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film is a book by film critic and writer Siegfried Kracauer, published in 1947.
WGerman Autumn is a book published in 1947 collecting a series of journalistic essays by Swedish novelist Stig Dagerman. Written during the fall of 1946 while he was on assignment by the Swedish newspaper Expressen in Germany, it depicts life in the war-torn country in the immediate aftermath of World War II. It was not published in America until 2011. The 2010 Swedish edition has an introduction by Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Elfriede Jelinek. It was adapted into the 2008 French documentary film 1946, automne allemand that uses archival footage from post-war Germany to illustrate Dagerman's text.
WThe History of United States Naval Operations in World War II is a 15-volume account of the United States Navy in World War II, written by Samuel Eliot Morison and published by Little, Brown and Company between 1947 and 1962.
WThe Home Country is a collection of articles written by the columnist Ernie Pyle for Scripps-Howard Newspapers between 1935 and 1940. It was compiled and published in 1947 by William Sloan Associates, Inc., after his death in 1945.
WIf This Is a Man is a memoir by Italian Jewish writer Primo Levi, first published in 1947. It describes his arrest as a member of the Italian anti-fascist resistance during the Second World War, and his incarceration in the Auschwitz concentration camp (Monowitz) from February 1944 until the camp was liberated on 27 January 1945.
WInside U.S.A. is a nonfiction book by John Gunther, first published in 1947 and one of that year's best-selling nonfiction books in the United States. It describes the author's observations during 13 months of travel through the 48 U.S. states beginning in November 1944.
WIntroduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit is a 1947 book about Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel by the philosopher Alexandre Kojève, in which the author combines the labor philosophy of Karl Marx with the Being-Toward-Death of Martin Heidegger. Kojève develops many themes that would be fundamental to existentialism and French theory such as the end of history and the Master-Slave Dialectic.
WKafka's Prayer is a 1947 book-length analysis of Franz Kafka and his works by Paul Goodman.
WLetters from Hawaii is a collection of 25 letters that Mark Twain wrote from Hawaii in 1866 as a special correspondent for the Sacramento Union newspaper. The 25 letters, written during Twain's four-month visit, were not published as a book until 1947.
WLTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii: Notizbuch eines Philologen (1947) is a book by Victor Klemperer, Professor of Literature at the Dresden University of Technology. The title, half in Latin and half in German, translates to "The Language of the Third Reich: A Philologist's Notebook"; the book is published in English translation as The Language of the Third Reich.
WThe Mainspring of Human Progress, by Henry Grady Weaver, is a libertarian history book published in 1947 by Talbot Books. In 1953, the Foundation for Economic Education printed a revised edition and has done all subsequent printings. The book borrows heavily from the 1943 Rose Wilder Lane book The Discovery of Freedom.
WMeaning and Necessity: A Study in Semantics and Modal Logic is a book about semantics and modal logic by the philosopher Rudolf Carnap. The book, in which Carnap discusses the nature of linguistic expressions, was a continuation of his previous work in semantics in Introduction to Semantics (1942) and Formalization of Logic (1943). Considered an important discussion of semantics, it was influential and provided a basis for further developments in modal logic.
WMiracles is a book written by C. S. Lewis, originally published in 1947 and revised in 1960. Lewis argues that before one can learn from the study of history whether or not any miracles have ever occurred, one must first settle the philosophical question of whether it is logically possible that miracles can occur in principle. He accuses modern historians and scientific thinkers, particularly secular biblical scholars, of begging the question against miracles, insisting that modern disbelief in miracles is a cultural bias thrust upon the historical record and is not derivable from it.
WModern Woman: The Lost Sex is a 1947 work of scientific literature written by Ferdinand Lundberg and Marynia F. Farnham, M.D. which discusses the sociological and psychological context of American women in the post World War II era.
WThe Notebooks of Henry James are private notes made by the American-British novelist and critic. Usually the notes are of a professional nature and concern ideas for possible or ongoing fictions, but there are a number of personal notes as well. James made entries in the Notebooks throughout most of his career.
WOf Worlds Beyond is a collection of essays about the techniques of writing science fiction, edited by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach. It was first published in 1947 by Fantasy Press in an edition of 1,262 copies. It has been reprinted by Advent in 1964 and by Dobson in 1965.
WOne Two Three... Infinity: Facts and Speculations of Science is a popular science book by theoretical physicist George Gamow, first published in 1947, but still available in print and electronic formats. The book explores a wide range of fundamental concepts in mathematics and science, written at a level understandable by middle school students up through "intelligent layman" adults. The book includes many handmade illustrations by Gamow.
WThe Person and the Common Good is a 1947 book about social philosophy by the French philosopher Jacques Maritain.
WRight Through the Pack: A Bridge Fantasy is a 1947 book about the game of contract bridge by Robert Darvas and Norman de Villiers Hart. It includes 52 deals in which each of the 52 cards of the pack plays a significant role, described by and interspersed with comments from the playing cards themselves, the anthropomorphic "People of the Pack".
WThe Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry is a 1947 collection of essays by Cleanth Brooks. It is considered a seminal text in the New Critical school of literary criticism. The title contains an allusion to the fourth stanza of John Donne's poem, "The Canonization", which is the primary subject of the first chapter of the book.
WWhat of the Mormons?: A Brief Study of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a 1947 book by Gordon B. Hinckley that was published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Portions of the book continue to be published by the LDS Church under the title Truth Restored: A Short History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
WYazh Nool or Yal Nool is a musical research book on yazh, one of the ancient musical instruments of the Tamils. The book was written by Swami Vipulananda and first published in 1947 with the support of The Karanthai Tamil Sangam in Madurai. The book is considered one of Vipulananda's significant works as well as an important treatise on the musical heritage of yazh.