text:
|Publication number
|Publication type
|Application number
|Publication date
|May 10, 2005
|Filing date
|Jun 22, 2000
|Priority date
|Jun 22, 2000
|Fee status
|Also published as
|Publication number
|Norman D. Geddes, Douglas M. Hosmer
|Original Assignee
|Applied Systems Intelligence, Inc.
|Export Citation
|BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan
|Patent Citations (39), Non-Patent Citations (61), Referenced by (46), Classifications (13), Legal Events (7)
|External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, Espacenet
A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent files or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
The present invention relates to the field of business process management, and more particularly to an extended enterprise operations system using a least commitment planner to more effectively handle ever changing real-world business situations by providing a dynamic business process management system.
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are often touted as attempts to provide a single solution for integrating business processes across an organization, or even across an entire supply chain, tying inventory control systems, manufacturing resource planning, sales and order management, marketing, purchasing, warehouse management, financial and managerial account, and human resource management so that all business processes are at the fingertips of corporate executives. In effect, ERP is an attempt to reduce all aspects of a business to a model that can then be tested, simulated, modified, refined, and examined so that a corporate manager can increase the efficiency of the entire business.
The use of ERP systems has increased business efficiency, especially for large, complex manufacturing operations. By providing the ability to simulate various scenarios, ERP systems assist managers to more effectively handle business process problems such as shortages, labor problems, quality control problems, etc. In short, by reducing business processes to a model of resources and constraints, ERP systems provide a tool for viewing the current state of an operation and a test bed for considering modifications to business processes.
Conventional ERP systems operate by treating business process modeling and simulation as a scheduling problem. A business is modeled as a set of processes, a collection of resources and a set of constraints whereby a company must determine how best to use its limited resources to achieve the largest benefit attainable. By solving the scheduling problem, conventional ERP systems attempt to provide a filly-ordered plan that optimally solves the problem presented to it.
Scheduling is a subproblem of the more general problem of planning. To characterize this, the following definitions are broadly accepted:
Scheduling subproblem: given a set of activities a1 . . . an, with precedent relationships aj>ak, and a set of resources r1 . . . rm needed to perform the activities, what is the best allocation and ordering of the activities and resources. Best is normally expressed as the optimal value of some expression J(ri) that is related to the cost of the resources used and the benefits obtained.
Planning subproblem: given one or more objectives, what is the best set of activities a1 . . . an and what are the precedence relationships aj>ak that exist between them to accomplish the desired objectives.
Clearly, these definitions imply that the scheduling subproblem cannot be approached until after the planning subproblem has been solved. In addition, each of these subproblems, when formulated for real-world cases other than relatively trivial textbook examples, are easily within the class of problems known in computing theory as NP-Complete.
Current approaches to ERP and SCM typically assume a static set of activities as the business model. In pursuing a resource allocation, these ERP and SCM optimization processes can change attributes of activities, such as start and end times and allocation of resources to activities, but conventional ERP and SCM systems do not seek to change the set of activities themselves. This static set of activities defines a static business model.
Unfortunately, a static ERP business model cannot be completely accurate and cannot account for all contingencies. In actuality, there are many potential variations in the business models of companies. As goals change, the business processes themselves may need to be fundamentally changed. Often, the optimal schedule is not the best plan to handle the uncertainties of the real world because it is not the most robust. In the real world, requirements and resources are not static. The operation of a business is a dynamic process and it is desirable to provide a system for dynamic business process management that can better handle the inevitable changes that confront a corporate manager every day. It is desirable to provide a system for dynamic modification of business process models that permits dynamic changes in the planned set of activities as well as the schedule and resource allocations.
The value of planning is solely in its ability to improve the execution of a complex undertaking. The improvements may take the form of more effective resource allocation or more effective coordination between parties or more certain outcomes. The creation of plans that do not improve execution is itself a poor use of resources.
Determining an optimal plan in the face of uncertainty is often a waste of resources because the available resources and constraints in real-world problems change over time, sometimes faster than a new optimal plan can be recalculated. Before an optimal plan is completely carried out, a change will often force reconsideration and recalculation. Because solving the optimal scheduling subproblem is typically very computationally expensive, changes may occur in the pre-conditions before the result can even be calculated. Optimal schedulers do not have a mechanism for graded levels of commitment to activities and their parameters. When a change occurs, the entire schedule must be re-computed. As a result, a small change in input values to the optimal scheduler can produce a large change in the resulting schedule. Activities that were once possible to schedule may now become unscheduled. Conventional ERP systems attempt to create so-called "optimal" or fully ordered plans often requiring repeated reconsideration and recalculation.
An alternative view to optimal planning emphasizes adaptation. Modern control theory is based on adaptation. For example, the driver of a car does not plan about steering the car to stay on the roadway. Instead, steering behavior is continuously adapted to meet the needs of the situation. However, pure adaptation is not fully effective either—unless the driver has a plan in the form of an intended route to his destination, he may well become lost.
Partial order, least commitment planning is a method that blends planning and adaptation to produce robust behaviors. Activities are only partially planned, leaving many details to be determined by adaptation during the actual execution. However, the extent of planning is sufficient to ensure that the resulting behavior is feasible and can nominally be performed. Partial-order, least commitment planning allows an extended business enterprise to adapt flexibly to the changes in day to day operations while still achieving coordination and feasibility. It is desirable to provide a dynamic business process management system that calculates partial-order, least commitment plans for operating a business enterprise.
Partial order, least commitment planners also provide for graded levels of commitment to a set of activities. This allows the planner to maintain multiple alternative means to achieve multiple simultaneous goals, and increase or decrease its level of commitment to each of the alternatives as the situation unfolds. In this way, the choice of alternative to execute can be deferred until it is clear which alternative is superior. A partial order least commitment planner is also able to select multiple alternatives for execution as a means for hedging against uncertainty in outcomes.
Additionally, as business processes become more complex and as models become more detailed, the optimal planning mechanisms of conventional ERP systems takes longer and longer to complete. Many algorithms for schedule optimization have execution times of Order (n-cubed) or greater. Some optimal scheduling problems are known to be members of the very difficult and expensive class of problems known as NP-complete. It is therefore desirable to provide a planning mechanism that is faster than conventional optimal, fully-ordered planners Corporate managers desire fast, perhaps even real-time feedback and adaptation to cope with dynamic business situations.
Several related patents have been issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,299,287 issued to Tsuruta et al. (the '287 patent) discloses a method of knowledge management for dividing a goal into lower level subgoals. Additionally, the '287 patent discloses a system for cooperative goal and plan sharing between actors in the system. There is a need for a system that incorporates goal decomposition and cooperative planning in a business process management system. There is also a need for a system that performs partial order planning to better handle real-time, dynamic business process systems.
In accordance with the present invention, a system for conducting dynamic business process management for extended enterprise operations using partial order, least commitment planning is provided. The system includes a knowledge base for storing expert knowledge about one or more business process domains, an inference engine coupled to the knowledge base that includes a least commitment planner, a management system that collects data regarding one or more business processes and determines one or more goals, and a graphical user interface system that displays information regarding business processes. The inference engine uses the partial order, least commitment planner to determine one or more plans for achieving one or more determined goals.
The present invention is further described in the detailed description which follows, by reference to a plurality of drawings by way of non-limiting examples of illustrated embodiments of the present invention, in which like reference numerals represent similar parts throughout the several drawings, and wherein:
Concept Graph: a knowledge representation of the dependencies between observable data values and higher-level computations and assertions made about the data. A concept graph can be implemented as a directed acyclic graph of concept nodes that is a particular type of augmented transition network (ATN).
Expert System: a computer program that uses a knowledge base to assist in solving problems. Most expert systems use an inference engine to derive new facts and beliefs using a knowledge base.
Full-Order Planner: (also called a total-order planner) a process that computes a fully-ordered list of primitive steps or actions to reach a goal, in which each step or action is fully definitized at the completion of the planning process.
Inference Engine: a computer program that infers new facts or beliefs from known facts or beliefs using a knowledge base and a set of logical operations.
Intent Interpreter: an expert system that uses a knowledge base to determine the present intention of a user or a system.
Knowledge Base: a collection of knowledge (e.g., objects, concepts, relationships, facts, rules, etc.) expressed in a manner such that it can be used by an inference engine. For example, a knowledge base may include rules and facts or assertions as in traditional expert systems.
Least Commitment Planner: a process that generates a plan that avoids making a choice between two or more alternative courses of action unless it is necessary to do so. A least commitment planner avoids definitizing any particular sub-element of a plan beyond the minimum necessary to determine likely success. Final definitization of the primitive steps is deferred until just prior to the execution of each plan sub-element by a plan execution agent.
Primitive step. a representation of an activity that is not further decomposed by a planner. Also called a primitive action.
Partial-Order Planner: a process that generates a partially ordered set of activities at the completion of the planning process.
Plan. a abstract representation of a set of activities to be performed from the present into the future. A plan may be decomposable into plan sub-elements that define more detailed activities. The lowest level of decomposition of a plan is a primitive step or action.
Plan Execution Agent. a process that directly operates on the environment by performing activities represented by a plan.
Plan-Goal Graph (PGG): a knowledge representation for expressing causal relationships in an operational domain as well as the intentions of a user. A PGG can be expressed as an acyclic, directed graph where plans are decomposed into subgoals or primitive actions.
Planner: a computer program that determines a sequence of operations or actions to be taken to reach one or more goals.
Non-Monotonic Truth Maintenance: a system for maintaining the consistency of beliefs, assumptions, justifications and/or assertions in a knowledge base wherein knowledge can be retracted when an inconsistency is detected.
The present invention includes methods and systems for providing dynamic business process management services with partial order, least commitment planning. Conventional enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are known in the art such as those marketed by SAP™, JD Edwards™, Oracle™, and Peoplesoft™. The embodiment described below is a software implementation of the present invention that improves upon conventional ERP systems. Using the following description, one of ordinary skill in the art will be able to practice the present invention using conventional software development tools and techniques. The preferred embodiment of the present invention is developed in C++ on a Sun Microsystems™ server running the Solaris™ operating system.
The various embodiments of the present invention improve on traditional artificial techniques. One of ordinary skill in the art may find the following references helpful in providing appropriate background understanding in the design and construction of inference engines, knowledge bases, and various knowledge representations used by the present invention: (1) Schank, R. C. and Abelson, R., Scripts, Plans Goals and Understanding, Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (1977); (2) Schank, R. C. and Riesbeck, C. K., Inside Computer Understanding. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (1981); (3) Sacerdoti, E. D., A Structure for Plans and Behaviors, New York: Elsevier (1978); (4) Rinnooy Kan, A. H. G., Machine Scheduling Problems. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff (1976); and (5) Charniak, E, Riesbeck, C. K. and McDermott, D., Artificial Intelligence Programming. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (1980).
Finance 101 provides various components to assist corporate managers in bookkeeping. For example, the dynamic business process management system includes a general ledger 113 for maintaining a list of all accounts, both internal and external to the corporation. The general ledger 113 provides an information store that includes all accounting details of the corporation as well as analysis tools.
In addition to the general ledger 113, the Finance 101 component of the dynamic business process management system includes both an accounts receivable 110 component and an accounts payable 112 component. Accounts payable 112 tracks all bills that must be paid by the company and provides tools for scheduling payments and analyzing the outflow of corporate resources. On the other hand, accounts receivable 110 maintains customer accounts and other moneys owed to the corporation. Together, accounts receivable 110 and accounts payable 112 provide accounting tools that assist corporate managers analyze and track the flow of cash through the corporation.
Next, the fixed assets 111 component of the Finance 101 resources is information store and toolset for managing and tracking tangible, depreciable assets such as buildings, equipment, and property. This component allows a corporation to track depreciation and expenses associated with these assets.
Human Resources 102 provides various components to administer and maintain human resource information and processes. For example, a corporation must maintain information regarding their employees such as home addresses, Social Security Numbers, dates of employment, salary information, etc. The present implementation of a dynamic business process management system includes a personnel management 120 component that maintains all necessary information about each employee including the employee's name, home address, supervisor, Social Security Number, tax withholding information, date of employment, etc. Closely tied to the personnel management 120 system is a payroll 121 system. Payroll 121 provides an information management solution that assists the corporation in paying its employees.
Finally, Manufacturing/Logistics 103 provides components for managing business processes associated with the actual manufacturing operations of a company including: (1) capacity planning 130; (2) order entry processing 131; (3) transportation management 132; (4) project management 133; and (5) customer service 134.
The capacity planning 130 module of the present dynamic business process management system implementation assists companies in planning the daily production schedule for a corporation's manufacturing facilities. For example, capacity planning 130 may help an automobile manufacturer determine the efficient use of an assembly line. If there is a predicted surplus of parts, capacity planning 130 may help adjust production to meet the demands of the market.
The order entry processing 131 system helps a corporation monitor and process orders placed by customers. When an order for a customer is received, it is entered into the order entry processing 131 system. By having this data integrated with manufacturing data, corporations are better able to adjust production to meet the demands of customers. Closely tied to order entry processing 131 is transportation management 132. Once a customer's order is ready to be delivered, transportation management helps plan, schedule, and track the delivery.
In any corporation, there are numerous projects that are ongoing at any point in time. The Project management 133 system helps corporate managers track the progress of each project, quickly detecting slippages and analyzing how a slippage will affect other projects and other operations of the organization.
Finally, the customer service 134 component assists the corporation in tracking and responding to customer inquiries and suggestions. For example, customer service 134 may assist a company in managing a help desk where customers can call in to ask questions, report problems, and obtain additional information about the corporation and its various products and services.
Each of the components of a dynamic business process management system described above including Finance 101, Human Resources 102, and Manufacturing/Logistics 103 information systems are integrated to provide a platform for corporate managers to plan, simulate, test, and observe the day-to-day operations of a company.
The operating system 201 provides a platform for executing software applications and provides a standardized interface that abstracts from the details of the underlying computer's hardware. A database 202 is run on top of operating system 201 providing a mechanism for storing, search, and retrieving large amounts of data. In the preferred embodiment of the present invention, database 202 is an Oracle™ database.
Using database 202 and operating system 201, inference engine 203 provides the tools and framework for performing least commitment planning. In conventional ERP systems, inference engine 203 is an optimal scheduler. The present invention improves on the prior art by providing a partial-order, least commitment planner to increase the performance and to better handle the uncertainties and challenges encountered in the real-world.
Finally, the graphical user interface 205 provides a mechanism for interacting with users by displaying data on a computer screen and by receiving user input from a device such as a mouse, keyboard, or touch screen.
Information Management in an Intelligent Pilot-Vehicle Interface. Digital Avionics Systems Conference (Seattle, Wash., Oct. 5-9, 1992); (7) Geddes, Norman D., Large Scale Models of Cooperative and Hostile Intentions. IEEE Computer Society, International Conference and Workshop on Engineering of Computer Based Systems (ECBS'97) (Monterey, Calif., Mar. 27-28, 1997); (8) Webb, Barry W., Norman D. Geddes, and Leslie O. Neste. Information Management with a Hierarchical Display Generator; (9) Rouse, W. B., N. D. Geddes, and J. M. Hammer. Computer-aided fighter pilots. IEEE Spectrum. pp.38-41 (March 1990); (10) Geddes, N. D. and R. J. Lee. Intelligent Control for Automated Vehicles: A Decision Aiding Method for Coordination of Multiple Uninhabited Tactical Aircraft. Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International AUVSI'98 25th Annual Symposium and Exhibition. (Huntsville, Ala., Jun. 8-12, 1998); (11) Geddes, N. D., R. J. Lee, and J. L. Brown. A Portable Lightweight Associate for Urban Helicopter Pilotage. Submitted to IEEE (Sep. 25, 1997); and (13) Geddes, N. D. "Associate Systems: A framework for human-computer cooperation" 7th International Conference of Human-Computer Interaction. (San Francisco, Calif., Aug. 24-29, 1997).
First, we discuss the one or more planners 302. Any conventional planner can be used with the present invention; however, the preferred embodiment uses a real-time, partial-order, least-commitment planner. Such a planner is able to effectively manage real-time operation in a changing world. In a business system, the current state of the system is constantly changing. For example, new orders are being placed, efficiencies change, consumer supply fluctuates, and the availability of labor and parts changes. A dynamic business process management system that only plans to the level of detail necessary to ensure feasibility for given constraints conserves resources by preventing excessive planning in a dynamic environment where preferences, goals, and intentions are always changing. Additionally, by only planning as far in advance as is necessary, a system can preserve options so assets are not committed until they are needed. In one embodiment of the present invention, the partial order, least commitment planner uses an abstract decomposition of the business objectives. This decomposition is represented as a plan and goal graph (PGG), an acyclic, directed graph that represents the hierarchy of possible goals that may be pursued to achieve an intention and the methods (or plans) that can be used to satisfy each goal Broad, general plans are represented by plan nodes of the PGG that are higher in the directed acyclic graph structure, while lower-level plan sub-elements provide increasing levels of detail in the lower levels of the PGG. A partial order planning system using a plan and goal graph (PGG) is described by N. D. Geddes and R. J. Lee in a paper entitled "Intelligent Control for Automated Vehicles: A Decision Aiding Method for Coordination of Multiple Uninhabited Tactical Aircraft" published June 1998.
Traditional ERP systems use a full-order planner. A planner determines a sequence of activities that can be taken to achieve as many desired states or goals as possible given available resources and domain constraints. A full order planner determines the "optimal" sequence of activities to be taken. Because this process requires searching all combinations of activities to determine the best combination, it is order n-cubed or worse in the number of activities. Partial order planners compute less than the "optimal" sequence of activities to be taken. For example, one type of partial order planner is a least commitment planner that operates by committing to as little as possible, thus reducing exponential growth of the search space resulting in increased planning speed. Since all plans are not necessarily considered, a partial order planner may not find the optimal sequence of activities for reaching one or more goals; however, a plan that satisfies domain and resource constraints will be quickly provided and the resulting plan can be recalculated as changes occur.
In one embodiment of the present invention, the planner 302 is a partial order planner and manages its level of commitment to the activities in the plan by using a state transition method to set the life cycle states of plan sub-elements. One embodiment of the plan life cycle state transitions is shown in FIG. 6. As a plan sub-element moves through its life cycle states from candidate towards the active state, the partial order planner is increasing its commitment to that plan sub-element. The partial order planner may also reduce its commitment by changing the plan sub-element state to rejected state or revoked state and ultimately to a terminated state. This mechanism provides a non-monotonic, graded level of commitment for each plan sub-element.
In one embodiment of the present invention, state transitions of the plan sub-elements are performed by the planner 302 in response to event signals received from the situation assessor 307. When the planner 302 moves a plan sub-element to a new life cycle state, the planner 302 requests the activation of specific monitors within situation assessor 307. In one embodiment of the present invention, the monitors represent the conditions under which a plan sub-element should be transitioned to a different one of its plurality of life cycle states. The situation assessor 307 periodically evaluates the specific monitors that have been activated, and provides an event signal to the planner 302 for each specific monitor whose conditions are satisfied.
In another embodiment of the present invention, a plurality of dynamic business process management systems after the present invention, and each containing an inference engine with a planner 302, can send and receive plan instances and life cycle changes for plan instances to each other. In this manner, sharing of planning and graded commitment between the separate dynamic business process management systems is performed, allowing all participating systems to take advantage of information about the plans made by another such system. The communications may take place over a plurality of communications means, including direct connection, telephony, wireless medium, or network, such as Internet or local area networks.
One embodiment of the present invention includes intent interpreter 303. In this embodiment, the dynamic business process management system monitors a user's actions to determine what the user is trying to accomplish. The intent interpreter does this using a task-analytic decomposition of the purposes of operators within the business process domain. In the preferred embodiment, this decomposition is represented as a plan and goal graph (PGG). Additionally, intent interpreter 303 uses knowledge represented as scripts. These scripts are sequences of partially specified primitive actions whose execution may be dependent on the state of the execution context. Other embodiments may use scripts that may include non-primitive actions (e.g., recursive script calls or additional script calls). Scripts represent standard procedures or business processes that are routinely used to perform specific business processes described by plan sub-elements. Such standard business procedures may include standard responses to both normal and abnormal events and operating conditions within an enterprise. The intent interpreter 303 uses reasoning on the PGG to represent problem solving behaviors that are necessary when existing business processes defined by scripts are not appropriate for the situation. Using assertions made by the other components of the system together with domain knowledge stored in knowledge base 306, the intent interpreter determines the most likely intent of a user. This determined intent is then used to update the information being displayed to the user and to generate one or more plans to satisfy the interpreted goals of the operator.
One embodiment of the present invention uses an intent interpreter similar to that described by B. H. Hoshstrasser and N. D. Geddes in a paper entitled "OPAL: Operater Intent Inferencing for Intelligent Operator Support Systems" published July 1989. The intent interpreter includes a model of user intent expressed as both scripts and plan-goal graphs. The system tries to understand operator actions in terms of its current model of user intent. An action is said to be "explained" if it is consistent with what was expected by the intent model.
The intent interpreter first tries to interpret the intent of a user action using script-based reasoning. This is equivalent to evaluating the user's behavior in the context of existing active standard business procedures of the organization. Each active script in the current intent model is examined to determine if the action is an expected step in the execution of the script. If the action matches an event in an open segment of a script, the event is marked as completed and the user action is explained. All active scripts are searched, even if a match is found early on, since a particular action may occur in more than one active script. When the script-based reasoner runs, it evaluates the termination conditions of each script to determine if any of the scripts should be removed from the current model of internet.
If the action is not predicted by the active scripts, then the system tries plan-based reasoning to explain the action in terms of a plan to satisfy one of the current goals of the user. In order to do this, the system uses a knowledge base that incorporates domain knowledge and knowledge of the possible plans and goals of the user. The knowledge base is a relationship-based representation of the plan and goal graph for the given domain. The PGG represents goal-driven problem solving behaviors of the user. The relationships also define how scripts and operator actions are related to the low level plans. Constraints are placed on the relationships to provide a way to account for the context in which the action occurred.
To explain an user action through plan-based reasoning, the system backward chains through its knowledge base to determine if the action was predicted by any of the current plans and goals of the user and his organization. This may require inferring intermediate plans and goals in order to connect the action to a higher level plan or goal that is already active. These new plans and goals will be invoked and incorporated into the current model of the user's intent. The intent interpreter 303 uses non-monotonic reasoning to update the model of the user's current intentions. As mentioned earlier, a side effect of inferring a new plan or goal may require revoking other plans and goals that are found to be inconsistent with the newly added plans and goals. Scripts may be activated or revoked by the inferencing of new plans as well. If the system is unable to explain the user's action either by scripts or plans, it is potentially an operational error by the user.
Intent interpreter 303 is a valuable, but not an essential component of the present invention. However, the intent interpreter 303 provides a mechanism for building an intelligent decision support system to assist corporate managers in viewing, analyzing, modifying, simulating, and testing the business processes and the data stored in a business process management system.
Script performer 305 can be used to execute multiple parallel situated scripts that are stored in knowledge base 306. As discussed above, these scripts are sequences of primitive actions whose execution is context sensitive. This component is a valuable tool in increasing the efficiency of the system to support real-time performance. The scripts can be thought of as a knowledge representation optimized for execution; just as executables can be viewed as optimized representations of source code.
The information manager 304 component of this embodiment of the present invention provides automatic information management features for the user interface. The information manager 304 uses knowledge stored in knowledge base 306 including the present intent of a user as determined by intent interpreter 303 to decide what information should be displayed to the user. Information needed by a user changes as the user's tasks and intentions change. This embodiment of the present invention uses a model to determine the information needed based on the current knowledge base.
One embodiment of the present invention uses an information manager 304 similar to that described in an article by B. W. Webb, N. D. Geddes, and L. O. Neste entitled "Information Management with a Hierarchical Display Generator." This article describes an implementation of a system that selects and tailors the format of displayed information to the tasks being performed by a user.
Finally, knowledge base 306 stores all knowledge used in the system to conduct reasoning including plans, scripts, assertions, relationships, frames, etc. The knowledge base 306 includes knowledge patterns and knowledge instances. Situation assessor 307 maintains the consistency of the knowledge instances in the knowledge base 306 by identifying and resolving any inconsistent or outdated beliefs. In one embodiment of the present invention, the situation assessor uses a concept graph to update values and beliefs. A concept graph is a knowledge representation of the dependencies between observable data values and higher-level computations and assertions made about the data.
In one embodiment of the present invention, the concept graph includes one or more means for calculating the degree of belief that the situation assessor 307 has in the values of each concept. One such means for calculating belief is Bayes Formula. When the situation assessor 307 receives new data, concepts that depend on that data are updated and their belief values are also updated. As a result of the updated belief values, the situation assessor 307 may reduce its belief in a concept, providing for non-monotonic truth maintenance for the situation assessor 307.
In another embodiment of the present invention, a plurality of dynamic business process management systems after the present invention, and each containing an inference engine with a situation assessor 307, can send and receive concept instances to each other. In this manner, sharing of situations between the separate dynamic business process management systems is performed, allowing all participating systems to take advantage of results and conclusions made by another such system. The communications may take place over a plurality of communications means, including direct connection, telephony, wireless medium, or network, such as Internet or local area networks.
In one embodiment of the present invention, the plans and situations shared by a set of distributed dynamic business process management systems that contain inference engines after the present invention are used by the inference engines to detect conflicts in planning between the collaborating companies. When a new or updated plan is received from a collaborating party by a second collaborating party, the supply chain management inference engine of the second party evaluates the plan provided by the first party for conflicts with any existing plans of the second party. The knowledge base 306 contains specific knowledge defining how plans and goals can be in conflict. In one embodiment, the plan and goal conflict detection uses the approach described in Geddes, N. D. A model for intent interpretation for multiple agents with conflicts (1994). When conflicts are detected with shared plans, the conflicting parties are both notified about the detailed nature of the conflict using the information manager 304.
The following is a simplified illustrative embodiment showing the interactions between the various components of the inference engine. Consider an intelligent decision support system to assist a team of humans in dynamic business process management across several operating departments in a company.
The starting point for the planning cycle is the posting of a high-level goal instance from a plan-goal graph (PGG). The posting of a goal triggers a planning cycle that involves decomposing and specializing high-level goals into low-level actions that can be executed to achieve that goal. Each goal in the PGG has one or more child plans, some of which can be executed directly and some that must be recursively decomposed into subgoals and sub-plans and specialized until the primitive steps are reached. Because the planner is a least commitment planner, commitment to a specialization created during decomposition is limited to only those aspects of the plan for which commitment cannot be deferred. If the system has been configured to interact closely with a human, candidate plans that are successfully decomposed and specialized may be proposed to the operator.
In addition to creating the decomposition of a plan into its sub-elements, the planner manages the specific life cycle states of each sub-element of a plan. The life cycle states, depicted in
Throughout the life cycle of a PGG plan or goal, the partial order planner maintains the parameters of the plan or goal and monitors for its success or failure. As a result, the planner can dynamically adjust plan parameters that mediate its execution and dynamically reselect and specialize children of a node as required.
The operation of the system begins in the situation assessor 307. In the simplest embodiments, this component monitors and reads inputs to the system. The situation assessor 307 uses the inputs it receives to add data to the knowledge base regarding the current state of the system. For example, in the present embodiment, the system monitors a user's key presses and mouse clicks to add facts or observations to the knowledge base 306. It may also collect data from remote data systems and financial systems to update the situation of importance to business management.
A monitor is a data input that can be defined by the system. Instead of monitoring all possible inputs at one time, embodiments of the present invention provide a mechanism for identifying what data is actually needed. A monitor corresponding to the needed data is then activated so that the needed data can be collected and used in the decision support process.
In this embodiment, the situation assessor 307 can also send and receive copies of concept patterns and instances by communicating with other business management systems also containing a situation assessor 307 and a knowledge base 306. The communication may be achieved by a plurality of methods including local networks, direct connection and wide area networks such as the Internet.
Whenever a new fact is added to the knowledge base 306, the situation assessor 307 processes any monitors related to the new fact. If a monitor is found to be satisfied, an event is generated to the planner 302 that causes the planner to update its planning.
Whenever a new fact is added to the knowledge base 306 that represents the execution of a primitive action by the user, the intent interpreter 303 processes the new assertion to update a model of the current intent of the user. The intent interpreter uses a PGG model of user intentions such as the portion of the one shown in FIG. 6.
The intent interpreter 303 searches through the system's PGG models of user intention to determine the possible and likely intentions of the current user. The intent interpreter 303 then instantiates one or more goals based on the current perceived intentions of the user.
The intent interpreter 303 uses non-monotonic reasoning in its search through the PGG knowledge in the knowledge base 306. If it is unable to find a complete path in the PGG from a hypothesized node to one known to be active, it can back up, retract its earlier assumptions and explore other paths.
In this embodiment, the intent interpreter 303 also sends and receives copies of plan and goal patterns and instances by communicating with other business management systems that contain an intent interpreter 303 and a knowledge base 306. The communication may be achieved by a plurality of methods, including local network, direct connection, and wide area networking such as the Internet.
Whenever a goal changes, or whenever a monitor event is received from the situation assessor 307, the planner 302 determines if any further planning needs to take place. For example, if the intent interpreter 303 instantiates a new goal, then the planner 302 needs to create a plan for achieving that goal. In the preferred embodiment, the planner 302 is a least commitment planner that performs a search of the PGGs stored in knowledge base 306 to determine subgoals and actions that need to be taken.
When goal instances and plan instances change life cycle state, the planner 302 uses knowledge in the knowledge base 306 to determine if any of the newly changed or updated goal or plan instances are in conflict with any other goal or plan instances. If a conflict is detected, the planner 302 sends a notification to the user interface.
One optimization that is made in the present embodiment is the use of script performer 305. In a particular domain, many plans are commonly encountered and constitute a body of accepted methods known to practitioners within the domain. These plans can be implemented as scripts that represent partially specified procedures that can be executed without the need for extensive planning. The script performer 305 is a component of the present embodiment that facilitates the execution of scripts. These scripts are represented in the system's PGGs that are a part of the knowledge base 306. The script performer 305 can perform many and possibly all of the primitive actions that could be performed by a human user, but the script performer 305 is limited by a set of permissions provided by the human operator.
As an example, consider the goal of having a part, and its child plan of buying the part. Because the process of buying a part from a vendor is a well-defined and frequently recurring sequence of primitive actions, it can be represented as a script. The representation of the goal, its child plan, the script, and the relationship between the plan and the script are all a part of the knowledge base 306.
When a specific instance of the goal of having a part, such as a stamped metal bracket, is encountered, the planner 302 can create the instance of the plan buy the part from a supplier. If the script performer 305 has been given permission, it can execute the script and automatically send the order to the necessary involved parties, including the shipping agent.
The components described above provide a mechanism for assessing the current situation or state of system, planning one or more responses and executing the course of action. The information manager 304 is used to display information to a user or to update the user's display based on the current intentions or plans that have been identified by the planner 302 and the intent interpreter 303 using the knowledge base 306, the script performer 305, and the situation assessor 307.
For example, the knowledge base 306 contains a representation of the information that a human user would need to access if he was involved in a plan to buy a part. One type of information relevant to a plan of this kind might be the commodity prices of the materials used in the part. When an instance of such a plan is created, such as buying an aluminum bracket from Company B, the information manager 304 uses the attributes of the plan and the knowledge base 306 to determine that the price of specific aluminum alloys is of interest to the human. The information manager 304 then commands the display presentations to show pricing data for the correct time period.
Illustrative embodiments of the present invention have now been described. It will be appreciated that these examples are merely illustrative of the present invention. Many variations and modifications will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art.
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Owner name: APPLIED SYSTEMS INTELLIGENCE, INC., GEORGIA
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text:
DarkUFO has released the unabridged, original scripts for The End and the Pilot.
All other scripts are coming soon. This could be the biggest rush of material we've had since the finale aired.
I've read what's up already. It offers quite a bit of information for our articles and offers lots of scenes that never made it into episodes. But it's also a lot of fun just to read the scripts and see all the extra details the writers put in to describe scenes and people's motivations.
Maybe the most unexpected thing I've seen so far is all the profanity. While the characters restrict themselves to "damn"s and "son of a bitch"s, the rest of the script unleashes f-bombs at every opportunity, particularly in explaining the subtext behind character's words. And Ed Mars's scene on the plane? The script describes him as a "grade-A prickfuck." I wasn't even aware that that was a word...

subset: commoncrawl


text:
The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil Warby Daniel Stashower
"It's history that reads like a race-against-the-clock thriller." —Harlan Coben
Daniel Stashower, the two-time Edgar award–winning author of The Beautiful Cigar Girl, uncovers the riveting true story of the "Baltimore Plot," an audacious conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln on the eve of the Civil War in THE HOUR OF/i>/i>/b>/b>
"It's history that reads like a race-against-the-clock thriller." —Harlan Coben
Daniel Stashower, the two-time Edgar award–winning author of The Beautiful Cigar Girl, uncovers the riveting true story of the "Baltimore Plot," an audacious conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln on the eve of the Civil War in THE HOUR OF PERIL.
In February of 1861, just days before he assumed the presidency, Abraham Lincoln faced a "clear and fully-matured" threat of assassination as he traveled by train from Springfield to Washington for his inauguration. Over a period of thirteen days the legendary detective Allan Pinkerton worked feverishly to detect and thwart the plot, assisted by a captivating young widow named Kate Warne, America's first female private eye.
As Lincoln's train rolled inexorably toward "the seat of danger," Pinkerton struggled to unravel the ever-changing details of the murder plot, even as he contended with the intractability of Lincoln and his advisors, who refused to believe that the danger was real. With time running out Pinkerton took a desperate gamble, staking Lincoln's life—and the future of the nation—on a "perilous feint" that seemed to offer the only chance that Lincoln would survive to become president. Shrouded in secrecy—and, later, mired in controversy—the story of the "Baltimore Plot" is one of the great untold tales of the Civil War era, and Stashower has crafted this spellbinding historical narrative with the pace and urgency of a race-against-the-clock thriller.
A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2013
Winner of the 2014 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime
Winner of the 2013 Agatha Award for Best Nonfiction
Winner of the 2014 Anthony Award for Best Critical or Non-fiction Work
Winner of the 2014 Macavity Award for Best Nonfiction
Editorial Reviews
"This account of the little-known Baltimore-based plot to assassinate Lincoln… hurtles across a landscape of conspirators, heroes and politicos in hotel suites, ladies' parlors and railway depots…. We can be grateful that Old Abe survived the first attempt on his life. And now we have the chance to relish the story of the clever and determined characters who were dedicated to his safety." New York Times Book Review
"The world's most famous private eye saves Abraham Lincoln's life--and perhaps the Union itself? Sounds like fiction, but in Daniel Stashower's riveting new book, it's all true. It's history that reads like a race-against-the-clock thriller." Harlan Coben
"Reads like a first-class detective novel . . . Pinkerton's tireless energy prevented a tragedy that might have destroyed the republic." James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom
"A fast-paced page turner. Stashower deploys the skills of a gifted veteran mystery writer." Michael Burlingame, author of Abraham Lincoln: A Life
Reads like a first-class detective novel . . . Pinkerton's tireless energy prevented a tragedy that might have destroyed the republic.
Product Details
- 9781250023322
- Publisher:
- St. Martin's Press
- Publication date:
- 01/29/2013
- Sold by:
- Macmillan
- Format:
- NOOK Book
- Pages:
- 368
- Sales rank:
- 267,492
- File size:
Read an Excerpt
Let none falter, who thinks he is right, and we may succeed.
—ABRAHAM LINCOLN, Springfield, Illinois, 1839
THE PECULIAR MARCH OF EVENTS that carried Allan Pinkerton to Baltimore had begun twenty-two years earlier—on the night of November 3, 1839—on a rain-soaked field in South Wales. At that time, Abraham Lincoln was still a young legislator in Illinois, voicing early concern over voting rights and the "injustice and bad policy" of slavery. An ocean away, Pinkerton was also throwing himself at what he called "the higher principles of liberty," even at the risk of his own freedom.
Pinkerton had traveled hundreds of miles from his home in Glasgow to take his place amid a swelling band of protest marchers as they prepared to descend on the Welsh town of Newport. These "crazed and misguided zealots," as one newspaper called them, were the vanguard of the Chartist agitation, a working-class labor movement struggling to make its voice heard in Britain. Pinkerton, though barely twenty years old, thought of himself as "the most ardent Chartist in Scotland."
Ragged and footsore, Pinkerton moved among the demonstrators as they huddled beside campfires, listening to firebrand speeches and waiting for reinforcements that would never come. They were, as Pinkerton himself would admit, a sorry-looking group. A few had tattered blankets pulled tight around their shoulders for protection against a chilling rain; others went barefoot in the squelching mud.
The Chartists' demands, as spelled out in the "People's Charter" of 1838, included universal suffrage, equitable pay, and other democratic reforms for Britain's "toiling class." Lately, the movement had been split by internal conflict, with one faction espousing nonviolent "moral force" to achieve its goals, and another comprised of "physical force men," who were prepared—perhaps even eager—to take up arms. Matters came to a crisis in July 1839, when the House of Commons rejected a national petition bearing over a million signatures. The following month saw the charismatic Chartist leader Henry Vincent convicted on conspiracy charges, spurring the physical-force wing of the movement toward a large-scale uprising.
Henry Vincent had been imprisoned at Monmouth Castle, outside of Newport, and it was thought that several other Chartist leaders were being held in the town's Westgate Hotel. As thousands of marchers, many of them miners and mill workers, massed on the outskirts of town, it became clear that they intended to demonstrate their "fervid passions" to the country at large. Exactly how they intended to do so remains a subject of debate. Many believe that the marchers planned to storm the Westgate Hotel and free the prisoners they thought were inside. Others contend that a massive demonstration was planned to secure the release of Henry Vincent from his castle cell, perhaps signaling a nationwide uprising in support of the Chartist agenda. In any event, there were iron pikes and muskets in the hands of many of the marchers, suggesting that their intent could not have been entirely peaceful.
The original plan called for the marchers to advance on Newport under cover of darkness, but it was past nine o'clock in the morning before they finally descended on the town. The delay proved costly: Military forces from a nearby royal regiment had used the time to reinforce the hotel and surrounding buildings. As the rain-soaked, disorganized laborers massed in the village square, they found themselves facing off against a small but well-armed company of battle-trained soldiers.
The details of what followed are not entirely clear. According to some accounts, the Chartists surged forward and banged at the shuttered windows of the hotel to demand the release of the prisoners, only to be met with a withering volley of musket fire. Within minutes, the ranks broke and the marchers fell back in wild disorder, leaving their weapons scattered on the ground. The defending soldiers now turned their guns on a handful of Chartists who had managed to force their way inside the hotel. In moments, said a witness, "there was a scene dreadful beyond expression—the groans of the dying—the shrieks of the wounded, the pallid, ghostly countenances and the bloodshot eyes of the dead, in addition to the shattered windows, and the passages ankle-deep in gore."
When the smoke cleared, some twenty-two men lay dead, and many others were grievously injured. Most had scattered as the first shots rained down on their heads, fleeing back to their homes, as one witness recorded, like "so many yelping dogs gone to ground." In the aftermath, many of the Chartist marchers would be captured and their leaders condemned to be hung, drawn, and quartered.
"It was a bad day," recalled Allan Pinkerton. "We returned to Glasgow by the back streets and lanes, more like thieves than honest working men." The lessons of the Newport Rising, as the unhappy episode came to be known, would remain with Pinkerton to the end of his days. Within a few years, he would gain international fame as the leading figure of a new type of law enforcement, followed by no small measure of infamy as a strikebreaker, but Pinkerton never entirely fell out of step with the Newport marchers in his efforts for social justice. The tension between the ideals of his youth and the obligations of the career he created for himself—like the split between the moral-force and physical-force Chartists—created a strain in his character that he never entirely resolved. He understood the impulses of the poor and disenfranchised, whether they were criminals or enemy soldiers, but this only sharpened the edge of his ambition. Decades later, while commenting on labor unrest in America, Pinkerton offered a rare public glimpse of the beliefs he had forged in Scotland: "I believe that I of all others have earned the right to say plain things to the countless toilers who were engaged in these strikes. I say I have earned this right. I have been all my lifetime a working man." Life in America, he insisted, presented common workingmen with opportunities he had been denied in his homeland, with a chance to "rise above their previous conditions, and reach a nobler and happier condition of life."
If Pinkerton's words sound naïve and self-serving to the modern ear, it was a sentiment Abraham Lincoln would have recognized. "Twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer," Lincoln once declared. "The hired laborer of yesterday labors on his own account today, and will hire others to labor for him tomorrow. Advancement—improvement in condition—is the order of things in a society of equals."
* * *
ALLAN PINKERTON WAS BORN in a two-room tenement flat on Muirhead Street in Glasgow, Scotland, in the summer of 1819. His family lived in the area on the south bank of the River Clyde known as the Gorbals, infamous at that time for its crime, brothels, and "persons in narrow circumstances." Named for his grandfather, a well-known blacksmith, Allan was one of eleven children, at least four of whom died in infancy. His father, William, a hand-loom weaver, died when Allan was barely ten years old, forcing him to leave school and take a job as an errand boy. He worked "from dawn to dusk for pennies," as he later recalled, in the shop of a pattern maker named Neil Murphy, who had been a friend of his father. After work, the boy would stand on the street, waiting for his mother, Isabella, to return from her job at a spinning mill. A high point during this cheerless period—and a memory he would often recall in his old age—was the night she came home cradling a single fresh egg for their evening meal.
Pinkerton soon grew restless with what he called the "dreary existence" of an errand boy. At the age of twelve, he took the bold step of resigning in favor of an apprenticeship with a Glasgow cooper named William McAuley, learning the craft of making watertight casks, barrels, and kegs. By the age of eighteen, Pinkerton had earned his journeyman's card and joined the Coopers' Union, but by this time McAuley had no further work for him. Pinkerton took to the road and became a "tramp cooper," traveling the country to pick up piecemeal work at breweries and distilleries. He sent whatever money he could spare back to his mother in Glasgow, but he often found himself living so close to the bone that he slept outdoors and went without food.
Friends from this period described Pinkerton as quiet and rather serious, with penetrating blue eyes beneath a coarse thatch of reddish hair. Most accounts refer to him as a short or "diminutive" man, though his height is sometimes listed as five eight—by no means small for the time. A famous photograph taken many years later shows Pinkerton standing with Abraham Lincoln at the Antietam battlefield. The image gives an initial impression of Pinkerton as undersized and somewhat hunched, though in fact he appears to be only half a head shorter than Lincoln, who was six four. In a second image taken at the same time, however, Lincoln has shifted his stance and Pinkerton appears to have lost several inches in stature. Pinkerton would likely have been pleased by the disparity; in later years, he made a point of masking his appearance by frequently changing his style of dress and facial hair, making it easier to go undercover. At a time when Lincoln cultivated a beard to make his appearance more distinctive, Pinkerton sought to go unnoticed.
As a young barrel maker, Pinkerton earned a reputation as a hard worker, but he was also known for his quick temper and aggressive manner. An avid reader, he grew passionate about social reform, and it was known that he would not back down from a fight over the political issues of the day. His years of work with heavy tools, including a ten-pound cooper's hammer, gave him a thick torso and powerful arms. Friends sometimes remarked on his top-heavy gait; he tended to tilt forward, as if prepared at any moment to wade into a brawl.
After the Newport Rising, the youthful strain of radicalism in Pinkerton's character hardened into something dark and implacable. He knew that he had been lucky to escape Newport with his liberty. The death sentences handed out at the time were later commuted, but dozens of his fellow Chartists would be transported to Australia. Still, Pinkerton was undaunted, and he threw himself back into the fight with even greater vigor. Within weeks, after some "rather disagreeable talk" at a gathering of the Glasgow Universal Suffrage Association, Pinkerton stalked out of the meeting hall and launched a group of his own, the Northern Democratic Association, for the purpose of ratifying the People's Charter—"peaceably if we may, forcibly if we must."
Pinkerton soon fell under the sway of a controversial activist named Julian Harney, later a friend and supporter of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who was often described as the Chartist movement's "enfant terrible." In January of 1840, when Pinkerton invited Harney to address an overflow crowd at Glasgow's Lyceum Theatre, there were loud jeers and catcalls from the rank and file, many of whom found the young firebrand's views too extreme. Outraged, Pinkerton sprang to his feet—his face scarlet and his fists clenched—ready to take on all comers. After a few tense moments, cooler heads prevailed and the lecture went ahead as scheduled.
Not all of Pinkerton's political meetings were so contentious. In the summer of 1841, he called on the choirmaster of a local Unitarian church to arrange a night of song at a neighborhood pub as a "whip round" fund-raiser for his Northern Democratic Association. Pinkerton attended the Thursday-night concert with his mother, and as the music began, he found himself unable to take his eyes off the choir's young soprano. Though only fourteen years old at the time, she had the bearing and polish of a seasoned performer, and she soon brought the crowd to its feet with a spirited rendition of a forbidden Chartist song. Hopelessly smitten, Pinkerton took his friend Robbie Fergus aside to learn all he could about the young singer. She was a bookbinder's apprentice from the nearby town of Paisley, Fergus told him, and her name was Joan Carfrae. At future concerts, Pinkerton made a point of sitting in the front row, wearing his best and perhaps only suit. He soon took it upon himself to escort Miss Carfrae home after each appearance. "I got to sort of hanging around her, clinging to her, so to speak," Pinkerton later wrote, "and I knew I couldn't live without her."
Looking back on his courtship of Joan Carfrae in later years, Pinkerton recalled his distress, during the winter months of 1842, when a king's warrant was issued for his arrest as a prominent leader of the Chartist movement. "I had become an outlaw with a price on my head," he wrote. A number of his fellow Chartists were rounded up, but by the time the police sought out Pinkerton at his mother's flat, the young cooper had fled. For several months, Pinkerton's friends helped to hide him from the law, but he knew it was only a matter of time before he landed in jail, awaiting transportation to Australia. By this stage, many of his friends and Chartist colleagues had already decamped for America, including his friend Robbie Fergus, who had recently established himself in Chicago. Realizing that his options in Scotland were narrowing, Pinkerton resolved to follow Fergus and the others.
Joan Carfrae soon got wind of the plan. "When I had the price set on my head, she found me where I was hiding," Pinkerton recalled, "and when I told her I was all set up to making American barrels for the rest of my life and ventured it would be a pretty lonesome business without my bonnie singing bird around the shop, she just sang me a Scotch song that meant she'd go too, and God bless her she did."
In Pinkerton's memory of the event, he and Joan were married secretly and then—after a hasty good-bye to his mother—smuggled aboard a ship bound for America, under the wing of the kindly Neil Murphy, the family friend who had given Pinkerton his start as a ten-year-old errand boy. "Within a few hours," runs one early recounting of the drama, "he was both a married man and a wanted criminal fleeing to the New World."
This is an agreeably dramatic story, but Pinkerton's account would not have withstood the scrutiny of a sharp-eyed private detective. If the Glasgow police had truly been determined to arrest him, they would have had ample notice of his whereabouts. According to parish records, Pinkerton and Joan Carfrae were married in a public ceremony in a Glasgow church on March 13, 1842. No hint of secrecy or subterfuge is evident in the marriage register, and the Scottish tradition of the "proclamation of the banns"—a public announcement of the intent to marry, posted on three consecutive Sundays so as to allow any lawful impediments to come to light—was duly observed. In fact, the only unusual feature of the wedding appears to have been the bride's age. Though she claimed to be eighteen, Joan Carfrae was, in fact, just two months past her fifteenth birthday.
If Pinkerton romanticized some of the details, his reasons for seeking a fresh start remained clear: "I know what it is to strive and grope along, with paltry remuneration and no encouragement save that of the hope and ambition planted in every human heart," he wrote many years later. "I have been a poor lad in Scotland, buffeted and badgered by boorish masters. I have worked weary years through the 'prentice period, until, by the hardest application, I conquered a trade. I know what it is, from personal experience, to be the tramp journeyman; to carry the stick and bundle; to seek work and not get it; and to get it, and receive but a pittance for it, or suddenly lose it altogether and be compelled to resume the weary search. In fact, I know every bitter experience that the most laborious of laboring men have been or ever will be required to undergo."
Privately, his memories of his start in life were harsher still. In a letter written nearly twenty years later, at the start of the Civil War, Pinkerton expressed a sentiment that would color every aspect of his new life in America. "In my native country," he declared, "I was free in name, but a slave in fact."
Slave was not a word Pinkerton bandied about lightly. Within three years of his flight from Scotland, he would be running a station on the fabled Underground Railroad, helping runaway slaves make their way north to freedom.
Copyright © 2013 by Daniel Stashower
Meet the Author
DANIEL STASHOWER is an acclaimed biographer and narrative historian and winner of the Edgar, Agatha, and Anthony awards, and the Raymond Chandler Fulbright Fellowship in Detective Fiction. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, AARP: The Magazine, and National Geographic Traveler as well as other publications.
DANIEL STASHOWER is an acclaimed biographer and narrative historian and winner of the Edgar, Agatha, and Anthony awards, and the Raymond Chandler Fulbright Fellowship in Detective Fiction. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, AARP: The Magazine, and National Geographic Traveler as well as other publications. His books include The Hour of Peril, Teller of Tales, and The Beautiful Cigar Girl.
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This is a must read for any history and mystery buffs. It tells the story of a plot that was uncovered to murder Abraham Lincoln while he was traveling to his inauguration. It also provides a history of the Pinkerton Detective Agency as well as information on some of the people Lincoln surrounded himself with. I found the information on the Pinkerton Agency fascinating. They acted on this case line an FBI or CIA. This is not a dry history read, but a page turner! Highly recommended!
Daniel Stashower in his new book, "The Hour of Peril" published by Minotaur Books gives us The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War. From the inside jacket cover: Daniel Stashower, the two-time Edgar award–winning author of The Beautiful Cigar Girl, uncovers the riveting true story of the "Baltimore Plot," an audacious conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln on the eve of the Civil War in THE HOUR OF PERIL. In February of 1861, just days before he assumed the presidency, Abraham Lincoln faced a "clear and fully-matured" threat of assassination as he traveled by train from Springfield to Washington for his inauguration. Over a period of thirteen days the legendary detective Allan Pinkerton worked feverishly to detect and thwart the plot, assisted by a captivating young widow named Kate Warne, America's first female private eye. As Lincoln's train rolled inexorably toward "the seat of danger," Pinkerton struggled to unravel the ever-changing details of the murder plot, even as he contended with the intractability of Lincoln and his advisors, who refused to believe that the danger was real. With time running out Pinkerton took a desperate gamble, staking Lincoln's life—and the future of the nation—on a "perilous feint" that seemed to offer the only chance that Lincoln would survive to become president. Shrouded in secrecy—and, later, mired in controversy—the story of the "Baltimore Plot" is one of the great untold tales of the Civil War era, and Stashower has crafted this spellbinding historical narrative with the pace and urgency of a race-against-the-clock thriller. Abraham Lincoln was traveling to Washington by train to be sworn in as President. The problem was in Baltimore. Due to the condition of the rail network back then there was the necessity of a time-consuming transfer of railcars from one station to another. This forced, extended, layover in Baltimore is Lincoln's hour of peril. He cannot count on the Baltimore police as they might be in on the plot to kill him as some of the policemen were secessionists. He cannot bring guards with him as that will draw attention to him and possible cause Maryland to join the Confederacy. So Allan Pinkerton hatches an ingenious plot to keep the President-Elect alive. Mr. Stashower gives us a brilliantly written assassination plot that is all true history. "The Hour of Peril" is a riveting page turner non-fiction thriller. I really liked this book! Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Minotaur Books. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."
The other books I have read by Daniel Stashower were superb - and this is his best yet. I just love his writing style, which carries you along wanting more. Also, a great topic which I knew only vaguely about before, but a fascinating story.
The Hour of Peril is interesting reading. It's been very informative to learn how Pinkerton got his start in the detective business. It's also amazing to read The Hour of Peril after reading the old book The Lincoln conspiracy. John Wilkes Booth had the save team of kidnappers together for the entire time Lincoln was President, as well as beforehand. Incredible. Lincoln's story gets more fascinating all the time.
Excellent Read if you are a history buff. It is also an excellent for women because believe it or not there were women in the Pinkerton Detective Agency in the 1800s. If you love to read about Lincoln or are a train buff, you will find the book interesting and worthwhile.
A well-told, "you are there"-type book. It starts out slow but builds fast. Stashower's a good storyteller. Recommended for all who like learning more about our 16th President. Enjoy the read!
With so many things written about Lincoln who would have thought you could find anything new? This is an obscure event but a very telling story and it's masterfully written. You also get a look at the Pinkerton agency, often talked about but not a overblown old west topic. A wonderful, historical novel!
If you are a christian then read this in explains some tips on your everyday world you live in and if you need help read this book it will definitenely help you!!!!!!
I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
This is the best book ever
The history little known.
My nephew is a civil war buff. That's why I bought the book for him. He has not yet let me know what he thought of it. The review he had read stimulated him to want to read it. That's all can say. Ignore the star marked above. It has no meaning in this case.
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Jake Fudge at Wikia
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