Download or read book The American Century written by Harold Evans and published by Random House. This book was released on 1998 with total page 738 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is America's story as it has never been told before, with award-winning editor and journalist Harold Evans documenting and celebrating the last hundred years with more than 900 original photographs, cartoons and illustrations.

Download or read book Twilight of the American Century written by Andrew J. Bacevich and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 630 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Andrew Bacevich is a leading American public intellectual, writing in the fields of culture and politics with particular attention to war and America’s role in the world. Twilight of the American Century is a collection of his selected essays written since 9/11. In these essays, Bacevich critically examines the U.S. response to the events of September 2001, as they have played out in the years since, radically affecting the way Americans see themselves and their nation’s place in the world. Bacevich is the author of nearly a dozen books and contributes to a wide variety of publications, including Foreign Affairs, The Nation, Commonweal, Harper’s, and the London Review of Books. His op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, among other newspapers. Prior to becoming an academic, he was a professional soldier. His experience as an Army officer informs his abiding concern regarding the misuse of American military power and the shortcomings of the U.S. military system. As a historian, he has tried to see the past differently, thereby making it usable to the present. Bacevich combines the perspective of a scholar with the background of a practitioner. His views defy neat categorization as either liberal or conservative. He belongs to no “school.” His voice and his views are distinctive, provocative, and refreshing. Those with a focus on political and cultural developments and who have a critical interest in America's role in the world will be keenly interested in this book.

Download or read book The Rise and Decline of the American Century written by William O. Walker III and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-15 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No detailed description available for "The Rise and Decline of the American Century".

Download or read book Why the American Century written by Olivier Zunz and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2000-06 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preface: "The New Colossus"Pt. 1: Making the Century AmericanCh. 1: Producers, Brokers, and Users of Knowledge Ch. 2: Defining Tools of Social Intelligence Ch. 3: Inventing the Average American Pt. 2: The Social Contract of the MarketCh. 4: Turning out Consumers Ch. 5: Deradicalizing Class Pt. 3: Embattled IdentitiesCh. 6: From Voluntarism to Pluralism Ch. 7: Enlarging the Polity Pt. 4: Exporting American Principles Ch. 8: Individualism and Modernization Ch. 9: The Power of Uncertainty Acknowledgments Notes Index Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Download or read book Is the American Century Over written by Joseph S. Nye, Jr. and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-03-05 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than a century, the United States has been the world's most powerful state. Now some analysts predict that China will soon take its place. Does this mean that we are living in a post-American world? Will China's rapid rise spark a new Cold War between the two titans? In this compelling essay, world renowned foreign policy analyst, Joseph Nye, explains why the American century is far from over and what the US must do to retain its lead in an era of increasingly diffuse power politics. America's superpower status may well be tempered by its own domestic problems and China's economic boom, he argues, but its military, economic and soft power capabilities will continue to outstrip those of its closest rivals for decades to come.

Download or read book Henry Kissinger and the American Century written by Jeremi Suri and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-01 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What made Henry Kissinger the kind of diplomat he was? What experiences and influences shaped his worldview and provided the framework for his approach to international relations? Jeremi Suri offers a thought-provoking, interpretive study of one of the most influential and controversial political figures of the twentieth century. Drawing on research in more than six countries in addition to extensive interviews with Kissinger and others, Suri analyzes the sources of Kissinger's ideas and power and explains why he pursued the policies he did. Kissinger's German-Jewish background, fears of democratic weakness, belief in the primacy of the relationship between the United States and Europe, and faith in the indispensable role America plays in the world shaped his career and his foreign policy. Suri shows how Kissinger's early years in Weimar and Nazi Germany, his experiences in the U.S. Army and at Harvard University, and his relationships with powerful patrons--including Nelson Rockefeller and Richard Nixon--shed new light on the policymaker. Kissinger's career was a product of the global changes that made the American Century. He remains influential because his ideas are rooted so deeply in dominant assumptions about the world. In treating Kissinger fairly and critically as a historical figure, without polemical judgments, Suri provides critical context for this important figure. He illuminates the legacies of Kissinger's policies for the United States in the twenty-first century.

Download or read book Man of Destiny written by Alonzo L Hamby and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2015-09-22 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From an acclaimed historian comes an authoritative and balanced biography of FDR, based on previously untapped sources No president looms larger in twentieth-century American history than Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and few life stories can match his for sheer drama. Following in the footsteps of his Republican cousin President Theodore Roosevelt, FDR devoted himself to politics as a Democrat and a true man of the people. Eventually setting his sights on the presidency, he was elected to office in 1932 by a nation that was mired in the Great Depression and desperate for revival. As the distinguished historian Alonzo Hamby argues in this authoritative biography, FDR's record as president was more mixed than we are often led to believe. The New Deal provided much-needed assistance to millions of Americans, but failed to restore prosperity, and while FDR became an outstanding commander-in-chief during World War II, his plans for the postwar world were seriously flawed. No less perceptive is Hamby's account of FDR's private life, which explores the dynamics of his marriage and his romance with his wife's secretary, Lucy Mercer. Hamby documents FDR's final months in intimate detail, claiming that his perseverance, despite his serious illness, not only shaped his presidency, but must be counted as one of the twentieth century's great feats of endurance. Hamby reveals a man whose personality -- egocentric, undisciplined in his personal appetites, at times a callous user of aides and associates, yet philanthropic and caring for his nation's underdogs-shaped his immense legacy. Man of Destiny is a measured account of the life, both personal and public, of the most important American leader of the twentieth century.

Download or read book The Short American Century written by Andrew J. Bacevich and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-02 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In February 1941, Henry Luce announced the arrival of “The American Century.” But that century—extending from World War II to the recent economic collapse—has now ended, victim of strategic miscalculation, military misadventures, and economic decline. Here some of America’s most distinguished historians place the century in historical perspective.

Download or read book Japan in the American Century written by Kenneth B. Pyle and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-15 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No nation was more deeply affected by America’s rise to world power than Japan. President Franklin Roosevelt’s uncompromising policy of unconditional surrender led to the catastrophic finale of the Asia-Pacific War and the most intrusive international reconstruction of another nation in modern history. Japan in the American Century examines how Japan, with its deeply conservative heritage, responded to the imposition of a new liberal order. The price Japan paid to end the occupation was a cold war alliance with the United States that ensured America’s dominance in the region. Still traumatized by its wartime experience, Japan developed a grand strategy of dependence on U.S. security guarantees so that the nation could concentrate on economic growth. Yet from the start, despite American expectations, Japan reworked the American reforms to fit its own circumstances and cultural preferences, fashioning distinctively Japanese variations on capitalism, democracy, and social institutions. Today, with the postwar world order in retreat, Japan is undergoing a sea change in its foreign policy, returning to an activist, independent role in global politics not seen since 1945. Distilling a lifetime of work on Japan and the United States, Kenneth Pyle offers a thoughtful history of the two nations’ relationship at a time when the character of that alliance is changing. Japan has begun to pull free from the constraints established after World War II, with repercussions for its relations with the United States and its role in Asian geopolitics.

Download or read book My American Century written by Studs Terkel and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology collects the most memorable interviews from eight of Terkel's earlier works: American Dreams, Hard Times, "The Good War," Division Street: America, Working, The Great Divide, Race, and Coming of Age. It also includes the introductions from each of those books, plus a foreword by Robert Coles which examines Terkel's writing.

Download or read book G Man Pulitzer Prize Winner written by Beverly Gage and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-11-22 with total page 897 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Biography Winner of the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography, the 2023 Bancroft Prize in American History and Diplomacy, and the 43rd LA Times Book Prize in Biography | Finalist for the 2023 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography Named a Best Book of 2022 by The Atlantic, The Washington Post and Smithsonian Magazine and a New York Times Top 100 Notable Books of 2022 “Masterful…This book is an enduring, formidable accomplishment, a monument to the power of biography [that] now becomes the definitive work”—The Washington Post “A nuanced portrait in a league with the best of Ron Chernow and David McCullough.”—The Wall Street Journal A major new biography of J Edgar Hoover that draws from never-before-seen sources to create a groundbreaking portrait of a colossus who dominated half a century of American history and planted the seeds for much of today's conservative political landscape. We remember him as a bulldog--squat frame, bulging wide-set eyes, fearsome jowls--but in 1924, when he became director of the FBI, he had been the trim, dazzling wunderkind of the administrative state, buzzing with energy and big ideas for reform. He transformed a failing law-enforcement backwater, riddled with scandal, into a modern machine. He believed in the power of the federal government to do great things for the nation and its citizens. He also believed that certain people--many of them communists or racial minorities or both-- did not deserve to be included in that American project. Hoover rose to power and then stayed there, decade after decade, using the tools of state to create a personal fiefdom unrivaled in U.S. history. Beverly Gage’s monumental work explores the full sweep of Hoover’s life and career, from his birth in 1895 to a modest Washington civil-service family through his death in 1972. In her nuanced and definitive portrait, Gage shows how Hoover was more than a one-dimensional tyrant and schemer who strong-armed the rest of the country into submission. As FBI director from 1924 through his death in 1972, he was a confidant, counselor, and adversary to eight U.S. presidents, four Republicans and four Democrats. Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson did the most to empower him, yet his closest friend among the eight was fellow anticommunist warrior Richard Nixon. Hoover was not above blackmail and intimidation, but he also embodied conservative values ranging from anticommunism to white supremacy to a crusading and politicized interpretation of Christianity. This garnered him the admiration of millions of Americans. He stayed in office for so long because many people, from the highest reaches of government down to the grassroots, wanted him there and supported what he was doing, thus creating the template that the political right has followed to transform its party. G-Man places Hoover back where he once stood in American political history--not at the fringes, but at the center--and uses his story to explain the trajectories of governance, policing, race, ideology, political culture, and federal power as they evolved over the course of the 20th century.

Download or read book Capital of the American Century written by Martin Shefter and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 1993-06-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Capital of the American Century investigates the remarkable influence that New York City has exercised over the economy, politics, and culture of the nation throughout much of the twentieth century. New York's power base of corporations, banks, law firms, labor unions, artists and intellectuals has played a critical role in shaping areas as varied as American popular culture, the nation's political doctrines, and the international capitalist economy. If the city has lost its unique prominence in recent decades, the decline has been largely—and ironically—a result of the successful dispersion of its cosmopolitan values. The original essays in Capital of the American Century offer objective and intriguing analyses of New York City as a source of innovation in many domains of American life. Postwar liberalism and modernism were advanced by a Jewish and WASP coalition centered in New York's charitable foundations, communications media, and political organizations, while Wall Street lawyers and bankers played a central role in fashioning national security policies. New York's preeminence as a cultural capital was embodied in literary and social criticism by the "New York intellectuals," in the fine arts by the school of Abstract Expressionism, and in popular culture by Broadway musicals. American business was dominated by New York, where the nation's major banks and financial markets and its largest corporations were headquartered. In exploring New York's influence, the contributors also assess the larger social and economic conditions that made it possible for a single city to exert such power. New York's decline in recent decades stems not only from its own fiscal crisis, but also from the increased diffusion of industrial, cultural, and political hubs throughout the nation. Yet the city has taken on vital new roles that, on the eve of the twenty-first century, reflect an increasingly global era: it is the center of U.S. foreign trade and the international art market: The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have emerged as international newspapers; and the city retains a crucial influence in information-intensive sectors such as corporate law, accounting, management consulting, and advertising. Capital of the American Century provides a fresh link between the study of cities and the analysis of national and international affairs. It is a book that enriches our historical sense of contemporary urban issues and our understanding of modern culture, economy, and politics.

Download or read book The Events That Shaped the Century written by Time-Life Books and published by Time Life Medical. This book was released on 1999-06 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sputnik. The first man on the moon. The Wright brothers and the Enola Gay. Television and e-mail. Dachau and Buchenwald. The Berlin Wall went up, and then it came crashing down. So did the stock market -- twice. It's been a century of elation and devastation -- of human greatness and of great tragedy. Here, from the archives of Time Life, is a poignant look at a century's worth of achievement, pathos, triumph, trends, and personalities. Here are the milestones and miracles, the inventions, explosions, heroes, and hurrahs that defined us in the 20th century. With hundreds of evocative images and countless moving stories, this chronicle recalls the faces, the moments, and the emotions of the century, as it draws to a close.

Download or read book J Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century written by David C. Cassidy and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-07-31 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born into a wealthy, secular New York Jewish family, a student of the Ethical Culture School in New York, later educated in theoretical physics at Harvard, Cambridge (UK) and Göttingen (Germany), appointed professor at UC-Berkeley and Caltech, J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) was on the forefront of the rise of theoretical physics in the United States to world-class status, contributing to the century-altering success of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. As the scientific leader of that project, Oppenheimer played a key advisory role in government, helping to forge the post-war military-industrial-scientific alliance that poured huge resources into post-war “big science.” Because of his position, Oppenheimer became for the public the heroic cultural icon of American science, but he also became a target and a tragic victim of the cold-war fear and nuclear war preparations underlying the McCarthy era. This biographical study focuses on Oppenheimer’s cultural and intellectual rise as a theoretical physicist as well as his role within the trajectory of the nation’s rise to scientific leadership and the post-war forces that confronted American science. This biography is nearly unique in that it includes discussions for general audiences of Oppenheimer’s work and contributions to theoretical physics, including his famous prediction of black holes sixty years before their confirmed discovery. “Now David Cassidy brings us the best account of Oppenheimer’s life in science with J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century.” — T. Powers, New York Review of Books “Cassidy covers this ground admirably in his thoughtful biography of Oppenheimer.” —Scientific American “Cassidy’s book...is probably the best single study of Oppenheimer to date.” — B. Bernstein, Physics World “Cassidy’s biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer is a concise, well-written book about the life of the famous 20th century scientist... A worthwhile read for anyone with an interest in the coming of age of American physics and how the weaknesses and strengths of one of its leaders shaped the relationship between science and the government for decades to come.” — Physics and Society “This biography is a detailed and beautifully written work. Cassidy expands beyond the traditional scope of a biography and expertly explores the surrounding environment that shaped Oppenheimer’s life.” — Atomic Archive “This excellent biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer places the eminent physicist in the context of twentieth century America... Cassidy... provides excellent insights into the life and times of this complex man. Unlike many other biographers of Oppenheimer, Cassidy assesses his role as a twentieth century theoretical physicist.” — Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues “A superbly researched biography... There is no doubt that Cassidy gives us a valuable perspective on Oppenheimer’s life. The author is shy neither of editorializing nor of making judgments about the personalities who appear in the story... These comments are almost unfailingly fair and justified by the evidence.” — Times Higher Education “Cassidy... has written a book that neither praises Oppenheimer nor buries his reputation but, rather, puts some tarnish upon the icon.” — G. Herken, Science

Download or read book Faith and Foreign Affairs in the American Century written by Mark Thomas Edwards and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-08-22 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States has led the world in almost every way since World War I. In 1941, Life magazine publisher Henry Luce dubbed his country’s preponderant power “the American Century.” His editorial was a statement of fact but also an aspiration for countrymen to unite in promotion of a world order friendly to American interests. Faith and Foreign Affairs in the American Century examines the nature of public involvement in American diplomacy. As a concept decades in the making, the American Century was conceived by those connected through the country’s leading foreign policy think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations. The missionary couple and Washington insiders Francis and Helen Miller, who fought to make the American empire a radically democratic one, figured prominently in that work. The Millers’ many partnerships embodied the conflicts as well as the cooperation of Christianity and secularism in the long reimagining of the United States as a global state. Mark Thomas Edwards offers in this study a genealogy of the concept of the American Century. Readers will encounter moments of Protestant Christian power and marginalization in the making of modern American foreign relations.

Download or read book The American Essay in the American Century written by Ned Stuckey-French and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2011-05-31 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In modern culture, the essay is often considered an old-fashioned, unoriginal form of literary styling. The word essay brings to mind the uninspired five-paragraph theme taught in schools around the country or the antiquated, Edwardian meanderings of English gentlemen rattling on about art and old books. These connotations exist despite the fact that Americans have been reading and enjoying personal essays in popular magazines for decades, engaging with a multitude of ideas through this short-form means of expression. To defend the essay—that misunderstood staple of first-year composition courses—Ned Stuckey-French has written The American Essay in the American Century. This book uncovers the buried history of the American personal essay and reveals how it played a significant role in twentieth-century cultural history. In the early 1900s, writers and critics debated the “death of the essay,” claiming it was too traditional to survive the era’s growing commercialism, labeling it a bastion of British upper-class conventions. Yet in that period, the essay blossomed into a cultural force as a new group of writers composed essays that responded to the concerns of America’s expanding cosmopolitan readership. These essays would spark the “magazine revolution,” giving a fresh voice to the ascendant middle class of the young century. With extensive research and a cultural context, Stuckey-French describes the many reasons essays grew in appeal and importance for Americans. He also explores the rise of E. B. White, considered by many the greatest American essayist of the first half of the twentieth century whose prowess was overshadowed by his success in other fields of writing. White’s work introduced a new voice, creating an American essay that melded seriousness and political resolve with humor and self-deprecation. This book is one of the first to consider and reflect on the contributions of E. B. White to the personal essay tradition and American culture more generally. The American Essay in the American Century is a compelling, highly readable book that illuminates the history of a secretly beloved literary genre. A work that will appeal to fiction readers, scholars, and students alike, this book offers fundamental insight into modern American literary history and the intersections of literature, culture, and class through the personal essay. This thoroughly researched volume dismisses, once and for all, the “death of the essay,” proving that the essay will remain relevant for a very long time to come.

Download or read book In the Shadows of the American Century written by Alfred W. McCoy and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2017-09-12 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning historian delivers a “brilliant and deeply informed” analysis of American power from the Spanish-American War to the Trump Administration (New York Journal of Books). In this sweeping and incisive history of US foreign relations, historian Alfred McCoy explores America’s rise as a world power from the 1890s through the Cold War, and its bid to extend its hegemony deep into the twenty-first century. Since American dominance reached its apex at the close of the Cold War, the nation has met new challenges that it is increasingly unequipped to handle. From the disastrous invasion of Iraq to the failure of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, fracturing military alliances, and the blundering nationalism of Donald Trump, McCoy traces US decline in the face of rising powers such as China. He also offers a critique of America’s attempt to maintain its position through cyberwar, covert intervention, client elites, psychological torture, and worldwide surveillance.