The Beyond War Foundation held the American copyright to this book and allowed its successor, The Foundation for Global Community (FGC), to post an electronic version on its web site with a waiver of the normal copyright restrictions for non-profit educational purposes. As of this writing (September 2005), the FGC is also in the process of closing and their site no longer contains the book. I have therefore placed a mirror image of that portion of the FGC web site here and the same restrictions to non-profit educational use apply.
It is fitting that the ideas contained in Breakthrough have migrated to a Stanford web site since they have their roots here in the philosophy of one of Stanford's most popular faculty members of the past. Prof. Harry Rathbun (1894-1987) taught business law but had much wider interests that profoundly influenced many Stanford students from the 1930's until his retirment in 1959. The following excerpts from a July 4, 2004 Washington Post article about then Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor says it better than anything I might write:
It was at Stanford that O'Connor met the key intellectual and spiritual influence of her young life: an eclectic law professor named Harry J. Rathbun. ... "He was just terrific," O'Connor told me last year. "And [he] was the first person ever to speak in my presence of how an individual could make a difference, even in our huge world. How a single caring person can effectively help determine the course of events. I had not heard that before, really, and he put it forward in such a persuasive way that I think most of us came to believe it might be true, and to take seriously the notion that we could make a difference."
While my contact with Prof. Rathbun occurred after I was on the faculty here and after he had retired, I fervently second Justice O'Connor's sentiments and dedicate this site to his memory and vision, and hope that it might provide a continuation of his life's work.
With that preamble, you may now proceed to browse the on-line version of the book (click on "Book Contents" under the cover icon) or download the entire book as a 2.6 MB PDF.