Primary Sources: United States Foreign Policy Kit


Book Description

Primary Sources help teachers integrate authentic resources into the classroom. Primary sources capture students' curiosity about the past, so they naturally begin to use critical thinking to analyze historical events. This kit uses original documents and photographs to help students step into the world of American diplomatic relations. From the Monroe Doctrine and Washington's Farewell address to modern-day environmental policies, students will examine the decisions and strategies that changed the course of history and shaped today's world. United States Foreign Policy kit includes: Eight Photograph Cards including Aerial Photograph of Cuban Missile Sites; NAFTA Signing; Demonstrators at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen; and more; Eight Primary Sources including Front Page of the New York Times Announcing the Atomic Bomb Drop on Hiroshima; George Washington's Farewell Address; United States Collective Defense Arrangements Map, 1967; and more; Teacher's Guide including lesson plans, student activities, and document-based assessments; and Digital resources including student reproducibles and additional primary sources.







The Federalist Papers


Book Description

Classic Books Library presents this brand new edition of “The Federalist Papers”, a collection of separate essays and articles compiled in 1788 by Alexander Hamilton. Following the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776, the governing doctrines and policies of the States lacked cohesion. “The Federalist”, as it was previously known, was constructed by American statesman Alexander Hamilton, and was intended to catalyse the ratification of the United States Constitution. Hamilton recruited fellow statesmen James Madison Jr., and John Jay to write papers for the compendium, and the three are known as some of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Alexander Hamilton (c. 1755–1804) was an American lawyer, journalist and highly influential government official. He also served as a Senior Officer in the Army between 1799-1800 and founded the Federalist Party, the system that governed the nation’s finances. His contributions to the Constitution and leadership made a significant and lasting impact on the early development of the nation of the United States.




The Domestic Sources of American Foreign Policy


Book Description

The new edition of this leading reader for courses in American foreign policy offers students an up-to-date, highly accessible introduction to the broad array of domestic factors influencing U.S. policymakers. Editor James M. McCormick has carefully selected two dozen current insightful and sometimes controversial essays by a distinguished group of leading experts-- scholars, journalists and public officials--including 11 new and 7 updated contributions. In his introduction, McCormick evaluates the challenges facing U.S. foreign policy makers in recent years and assesses the Obama Administration's successes and failures in its efforts to pursue a new direction in American foreign policy. The volume is then divided into three major parts with an opening essay by the editor to place each part in context and then a selection of essays that analyzes the topic in that part in more detail. Part I, "The Societal Environment," contains a series of articles on the position of interest groups, the impact of military experience, the effect of public opinion, and the role of elections and political parties on foreign policy. Part II, "The Institutional Setting," examines how various political institutions, such as Congress, the presidency, and various bureaucracies (e.g., the National Security Council, the intelligence community) shape American foreign policy. Part III, "Decision makers and Their Policymaking Positions," provides various case analyses over several administrations to illustrate how individuals and bureaucracies affect the foreign policy decision making at the highest levels of government.




Our Documents


Book Description

Our Documents is a collection of 100 documents that the staff of the National Archives has judged most important to the development of the United States. The entry for each document includes a short introduction, a facsimile, and a transcript of the document. Backmatter includes further reading, credits, and index. The book is part of the much larger Our Documents initiative sponsored by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), National History Day, the Corporation for National and Community Service, and the USA Freedom Corps.




Explaining Foreign Policy


Book Description

Scholars of international relations tend to prefer one model or another in explaining the foreign policy behavior of governments. Steve Yetiv, however, advocates an approach that applies five familiar models: rational actor, cognitive, domestic politics, groupthink, and bureaucratic politics. Drawing on the widest set of primary sources and interviews with key actors to date, he applies each of these models to the 1990-91 Persian Gulf crisis and to the U.S. decision to go to war with Iraq in 2003. Probing the strengths and shortcomings of each model in explaining how and why the United States decided to proceed with the Persian Gulf War, he shows that all models (with the exception of the government politics model) contribute in some way to our understanding of the event. No one model provides the best explanation, but when all five are used, a fuller and more complete understanding emerges. In the case of the Gulf War, Yetiv demonstrates the limits of models that presume rational decision-making as well as the crucial importance of using various perspectives. Drawing partly on the Gulf War case, he also develops innovative theories about when groupthink can actually produce a positive outcome and about the conditions under which government politics will likely be avoided. He shows that the best explanations for government behavior ultimately integrate empirical insights yielded from both international and domestic theory, which scholars have often seen as analytically separate. With its use of the Persian Gulf crisis as a teachable case study and coverage of the more recent Iraq war, Explaining Foreign Policy will be of interest to students and scholars of foreign policy, international relations, and related fields.




The American Republic


Book Description

Many reference works offer compilations of critical documents covering individual liberty, local autonomy, constitutional order, and other issues that helped to shape the American political tradition. Yet few of those works are available in a form suitable for classroom use, and traditional textbooks give short shrift to these important issues. The American Republic overcomes that knowledge gap by providing, in a single volume, critical, original documents revealing the character of American discourse on the nature and importance of local government, the purposes of federal union, and the role of religion and tradition in forming America’s drive for liberty. The American Republic is divided into nine sections, each illustrating major philosophical, cultural, and policy positions at issue during crucial eras of American development. Readers will find documentary evidence of the purposes behind European settlement, American response to English acts, the pervasive role of religion in early American public life, and perspectives in the debate over independence. Subsequent chapters examine the roots of American constitutionalism, Federalist and Anti-Federalist arguments concerning the need to protect common law rights, and the debates over whether the states or the federal government held final authority in determining the course of public policy in America. Also included are the discussions regarding disagreements over internal improvements and other federal measures aimed at binding the nation, particularly in the area of commerce. The final section focuses on the political, cultural, and legal issues leading to the Civil War. Arguments and attempted compromises regarding slavery, along with laws that helped shape slavery, are highlighted. The volume ends with the prelude to the Civil War, a natural stopping-off point for studies of early American history. By bringing together key original documents and other writings that explain cultural, religious, and historical concerns, this volume gives students, teachers, and general readers an effective way to begin examining the diversity of issues and influences that characterize American history. The result unquestionably leads to a deeper and more thorough understanding of America's political, institutional, and cultural continuity and change. Bruce P. Frohnen is Associate Professor of Law at Ohio Northern University College of Law. He holds a J.D. from the Emory University School of Law and a Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University. Click here to print or download The American Republic index.




Vietnam War [2 volumes]


Book Description

This detailed two-volume set considers the Vietnam War, one of America's longest and bloodiest wars, from a topical perspective, addressing the main characters and key events of the war and supplying many relevant primary source documents. The Vietnam War not only claimed the lives of nearly 60,000 Americans and more than a million Vietnamese, but the prolonged conflict also resulted in a firestorm of protest at home that shook the foundations of the country and made U.S. citizens question the moral principles and motivations behind our foreign policy and military actions. Written in a very accessible style by recognized authorities on the war, Vietnam War: A Topical Exploration and Primary Source Collection provides students and general readers with a complete overview of the conflict in Vietnam—a broad topic that remains an important part of the American history and world history curriculum. Using a topical approach to cover all aspects of the war, the set enables students to see the complete picture of the conflict through its presentation of reference entries and documents arranged in cohesive, compelling chapters. Examples of the primary documents in the set include "Communist Party: Evaluation of the Tet Offensive" (1968) and President Richard Nixon's Speech on Vietnamization (1969). These primary sources are augmented by oral histories of soldiers who fought in the Tet Offensive. Additionally, maps and images in each section enhance the aesthetic appeal of the book and heighten students' understanding of the material. Readers will come away with both a strong comprehension of the Vietnam War as well as an appreciation for how significant this proxy conflict was as a lead-up event to the global Cold War.




The Good Fight


Book Description

Former vice president Walter Mondale makes a passionate, timely argument for American liberalism in this revealing and momentous political memoir. For more than five decades in public life, Walter Mondale played a leading role in America’s movement for social change—in civil rights, environmentalism, consumer protection, and women’s rights—and helped to forge the modern Democratic Party. In The Good Fight, Mondale traces his evolution from a young Minnesota attorney general, whose mentor was Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, into a U.S. senator himself. He was instrumental in pushing President Johnson’s Great Society legislation through Congress and battled for housing equality, against poverty and discrimination, and for more oversight of the FBI and CIA. Mondale’s years as a senator spanned the national turmoil of the Nixon administration; its ultimate self-destruction in the Watergate scandal would change the course of his own political fortunes. Chosen as running mate for Jimmy Carter’s successful 1976 campaign, Mondale served as vice president for four years. With an office in the White House, he invented the modern vice presidency; his inside look at the Carter administration will fascinate students of American history as he recalls how he and Carter confronted the energy crisis, the Iran hostage crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and other crucial events, many of which reverberate to the present day. Carter’s loss to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election set the stage for Mondale’s own campaign against Reagan in 1984, when he ran with Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman on a major party ticket; this progressive decision would forever change the dynamic of presidential elections. With the 1992 election of President Clinton, Mondale was named ambassador to Japan. His intriguing memoir ends with his frank assessment of the Bush-Cheney administration and the first two years of the presidency of Barack Obama. Just as indispensably, he charts the evolution of Democratic liberalism from John F. Kennedy to Clinton to Obama while spelling out the principles required to restore the United States as a model of progressive government. The Good Fight is replete with Mondale’s accounts of the many American political heavyweights he encountered as either an ally or as an opponent, including JFK, Johnson, Humphrey, Nixon, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Senator Gary Hart, Reagan, Clinton, and many others. Eloquent and engaging, The Good Fight illuminates Mondale’s philosophies on opportunity, governmental accountability, decency in politics, and constitutional democracy, while chronicling the evolution of a man and the country in which he was lucky enough to live.




Explaining Foreign Policy


Book Description

Steve A. Yetiv has developed an interdisciplinary, integrated approach to studying foreign policy decisions, which he applies here to understand better how and why the United States went to war in the Persian Gulf in 1991 and 2003. Yetiv’s innovative method employs the rational actor, cognitive, domestic politics, groupthink, and bureaucratic politics models to explain the foreign policy behavior of governments. Drawing on the widest set of primary sources to date—including a trove of recently declassified documents—and on interviews with key actors, he applies these models to illuminate the decision-making process in the two Gulf Wars and to develop theoretical notions about foreign policy. What Yetiv discovers, in addition to empirical evidence about the Persian Gulf and Iraq wars, is that no one approach provides the best explanation, but when all five are used, a fuller and more complete understanding emerges. Thoroughly updated with a new preface and a chapter on the 2003 Iraq War, Explaining Foreign Policy, already widely used in courses, will continue to be of interest to students and scholars of foreign policy, international relations, and related fields.




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