The relevance question: professional social science and the fate of security studies -- How war opened the door to the ivory tower during the first world war and peace closed it again -- World war ii: social scientists in the physicists' war -- Social science's cold war: the behavioral revolution's quixotic effort to construct a "policy science" -- Summer studies, centers, and a government wide clearinghouse: federal efforts to mobilize social science for the cold war -- The scientific strategists follow the economists to an intellectual dead end -- Strategic modernization theory bogs down in the Vietnam quagmire -- The "renaissance of security" languished until the owl of minerva flew after 9/11.