Author : James Spiller
Publisher : Springer
Page : 279 pages
File Size : 35,19 MB
Release : 2016-04-29
Category : History
ISBN : 113750787X
This book compares the cultural politics of the U.S. space and Antarctic programs during the Cold War. It analyzes how culturally salient terms, especially the nationalist motif of the frontier, were used to garner public support for these strategic initiatives and, more generally, United States internationalism during this period.
Author : Alfred E. Eckes
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 11,43 MB
Release : 2003-06-30
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780521009065
Revolutionary improvements in technology combined with the leadership elite's enthusiasm for de-regulation of markets and free trade to fuel American-style globalization. The nation rose to economic power after the Spanish-American War, and won both world wars and the Cold war, after which America's power and cultural influence soared as business and financial interests pursued the long-term quest for global markets. But, the tragic events of September 2001 and the growing volatility of global finance, raised questions about whether the era of American-led globalization was sustainable, or vulnerable to catastrophic collapse.
Author : William O. Walker III
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 212 pages
File Size : 29,11 MB
Release : 2018-10-15
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1501726153
In 1941 the magazine publishing titan Henry R. Luce urged the nation’s leaders to create an American Century. But in the post-World-War-II era proponents of the American Century faced a daunting task. Even so, Luce had articulated an animating idea that, as William O. Walker III skillfully shows in The Rise and Decline of the American Century, would guide United States foreign policy through the years of hot and cold war. The American Century was, Walker argues, the counter-balance to defensive war during World War II and the containment of communism during the Cold War. American policymakers pursued an aggressive agenda to extend U.S. influence around the globe through control of economic markets, reliance on nation-building, and, where necessary, provision of arms to allied forces. This positive program for the expansion of American power, Walker deftly demonstrates, came in for widespread criticism by the late 1950s. A changing world, epitomized by the nonaligned movement, challenged U.S. leadership and denigrated the market democracy at the heart of the ideal of the American Century. Walker analyzes the international crises and monetary troubles that further curtailed the reach of the American Century in the early 1960s and brought it to a halt by the end of that decade. By 1968, it seemed that all the United States had to offer to allies and non-hostile nations was convenient military might, nuclear deterrence, and the uncertainty of détente. Once the dust had fallen on Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency and Richard M. Nixon had taken office, what remained was, The Rise and Decline of the American Century shows, an adulterated, strategically-based version of Luce’s American Century.
Author : Brent Ryan Bellamy
Publisher : Wesleyan University Press
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 34,52 MB
Release : 2021-03-08
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0819580333
This book explores the post-apocalyptic novel in American literature from the 1940s to the present as reflections of a growing anxiety about the decline of US hegemony. Post-apocalyptic novels imagine human responses to the aftermath of catastrophe. The shape of the future they imagine is defined by "the remainder," when what is left behind expresses itself in storytelling tropes. Since 1945 the portentous fate of the United States has shifted from the irradiated future of nuclear holocaust to the saltwater wash of global warming. Theorist Brent Ryan Bellamy illuminates the political unconscious of post-apocalyptic writing, drawing on a range of disciplinary fields, including science fiction studies, American studies, energy humanities research, and critical race theory. From George R. Stewart's Earth Abides to N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season, Remainders of the American Century describes the tension between a reactionary impulse and the progressive impetus for a new world. "Brent Ryan Bellamy weaves a rich and diverse tapestry of fictions, all of which navigate the changing valences of apocalypse, survival, and remainders during the rise and fall of the post-Second World War 'American Century.' Given the global post-apocalyptic reality we all currently inhabit, this is a timely and significant study." "Brent Ryan Bellamy weaves a rich and diverse tapestry of fictions, all of which navigate the changing valences of apocalypse, survival, and remainders during the rise and fall of the post-Second World War 'American Century.' Given the global post-apocalyptic reality we all currently inhabit, this is a timely and significant study." —Gerry Canavan, author of Octavia E. Butler
Author : David M. Wrobel
Publisher : University of New Mexico Press
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 26,34 MB
Release : 2013
Category : History
ISBN : 0826353703
"This book examines how travel writers viewed the American West from the age of Manifest Destiny through the Great Depression. In the nineteenth century, the West was often presented as one developing frontier among many; in the twentieth century, travel writers often searched for American frontier distinctiveness"--Provided by publisher"--Provided by publisher.
Author : David Fitzgerald
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 22,45 MB
Release : 2022-01-13
Category : History
ISBN : 1350102237
Taking American mobilization in WWII as its departure point, this book offers a concise but comprehensive introduction to the history of militarization in the United States since 1940. Exploring the ways in which war and the preparation for war have shaped and affected the United States during 'The American Century', Fitzgerald demonstrates how militarization has moulded relations between the US and the rest of the world. Providing a timely synthesis of key scholarship in a rapidly developing field, this book shows how national security concerns have affected issues as diverse as the development of the welfare state, infrastructure spending, gender relations and notions of citizenship. It also examines the way in which war is treated in the American imagination; how it has been depicted throughout this era, why its consequences have been made largely invisible and how Americans have often considered themselves to be reluctant warriors. In integrating domestic histories with international and transnational topics such as the American 'empire of bases' and the experience of American service personnel overseas, the author outlines the ways in which American militarization had, and still has, global consequences. Of interest to scholars, researchers and students of military history, war studies, US foreign relations and policy, this book addresses a burgeoning and dynamic field from which parallels and comparisons can be drawn for the modern day.
Author : Frank Christianson
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
Page : 263 pages
File Size : 10,60 MB
Release : 2017-12-04
Category : History
ISBN : 0806159944
When William F. Cody introduced his Wild West exhibition to European audiences in 1887, the show soared to new heights of popularity and success. With its colorful portrayal of cowboys, Indians, and the taming of the North American frontier, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West popularized a myth of American national identity and shaped European perceptions of the United States. The Popular Frontier is the first collection of essays to explore the transnational impact and mass-cultural appeal of Cody’s Wild West. As editor Frank Christianson explains in his introduction, for the first four years after Cody conceived it, the Wild West exhibition toured the United States, honing the operation into a financially solvent enterprise. When the troupe ventured to England for its first overseas booking, its success exceeded all expectations. Between 1887 and 1906 the Wild West performed in fourteen countries, traveled more than 200,000 miles, and attracted a collective audience in the tens of millions. How did Europeans respond to Cody’s vision of the American frontier? And how did European countries appropriate what they saw on display? Addressing these questions and others, the contributors to this volume consider how the Wild West functioned within social and cultural contexts far grander in scope than even the vast American West. Among the topics addressed are the pairing of William F. Cody and Theodore Roosevelt as embodiments of frontier masculinity, and the significance of the show’s most enduring persona, Annie Oakley. An informative and thought-provoking examination of the Wild West’s foreign tours, The Popular Frontier offers new insight into late-nineteenth-century gender politics and ethnicity, the development of American nationalism, and the simultaneous rise of a global mass culture.
Author : James T. Bennett
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 209 pages
File Size : 38,67 MB
Release : 2010-09-11
Category : Science
ISBN : 1441966854
Federal patronage of science was never contemplated by the framers of the Constitution, but they did seek to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Art” by granting inventors patent rights. However, direct subvention to scientists and scientific organizations was not considered appropriate activity of the central government. In the 19th Century, American science was funded almost entirely through private investors. Since WWII, however, the federal government has become the primary patron of American science. From the race-to-space in the 1950s to current furor over global warming, Bennett traces the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which government has co-opted scientific research and reinforced a culture in which challengers to proscribed wisdom are frozen out. Citing original documents and media reports, Bennett offers a compelling, entertaining, and thought-provoking perspective on political influence on scientific research and its implications for a democratic society. "During the Nineteenth Century, almost entirely on private funding, American science grew from practically nothing to world class. Now, however, over fifty percent of American science is funded by the federal government. Dr. Bennett traces the path, "crisis" after "crisis," by which American science became practically an arm of the federal government. His tale is a cautionary one, warning against future "crisis mongers" who would extend the government's already majority control of American science even further. His warning is a timely one, and it should be heeded." Joseph P. Martino, author of Science Funding: Politics and Porkbarrel "Bennett's latest book offers a challenging interpretation of the rise of the American federal science establishment since World War II. Focusing primarily on the growth of the space program, Bennett argues that crisis, real or imagined, is the source of state power and state funding for science. The Doomsday Lobby offers what no doubt will be viewed as a controversial contribution to the history of American science policy, and more broadly to an understanding of the role of the state in society." James D. Savage, Professor of Politics, University of Virginia, and author of Funding Science in America
Author : Kenneth B. Pyle
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 259 pages
File Size : 50,94 MB
Release : 2018-10-15
Category : History
ISBN : 0674989082
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.
Author : Andrew Offenburger
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 319 pages
File Size : 26,7 MB
Release : 2019-06-25
Category : History
ISBN : 0300225873
The surprising connections between the American frontier and empire in southern Africa, and the people who participated in both This book begins in an era when romantic notions of American frontiering overlapped with Gilded Age extractive capitalism. In the late nineteenth century, the U.S.-Mexican borderlands constituted one stop of many where Americans chased capitalist dreams beyond the United States. Crisscrossing the American West, southern Africa, and northern Mexico, Andrew Offenburger examines how these frontier spaces could glitter with grandiose visions, expose the flawed and immoral strategies of profiteers, and yet reveal the capacity for resistance and resilience that indigenous people summoned when threatened. Linking together a series of stories about Boer exiles who settled in Mexico, a global network of protestant missionaries, and adventurers involved in the parallel displacements of indigenous peoples in Rhodesia and the Yaqui Indians in Mexico, Offenburger situates the borderlands of the Mexican North and the American Southwest within a global system, bound by common actors who interpreted their lives through a shared frontier ideology.
