Dean Acheson and the Creation of an American World Order

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Publisher : Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN 13 : 1597976539
Total Pages : 357 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (979 download)

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Book Synopsis Dean Acheson and the Creation of an American World Order by : Robert J. McMahon

Download or read book Dean Acheson and the Creation of an American World Order written by Robert J. McMahon and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2009 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This compact and accessible biography critically assesses the life and career of Dean Acheson, one of Americaas foremost diplomats and strategists. As a top State Department official from 1941 to 1947 and as Harry S. Trumanas secretary of state from 1949 to 1953, Acheson shaped many of the key U.S. foreign policy initiatives of those years, including the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the rebuilding of Germany and Japan, Americaas intervention in Korea, and its early involvement in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Right up until his death in 1971, Acheson continued to participate in major policy decisions and debates, including the Cuban missile and Berlin crises and the Vietnam War.Dean Acheson can justifiably be called the principal architect of the American Century. More than any other individual, Acheson is responsible for designing and implementing the ultimately successful U.S. Cold War strategy for containing the Soviet Union. In an even broader sense, Acheson played an instrumental role in creating the institutions, alliances, and economic arrangements that, in the 1940s, brought to life an American-dominated world order. The remarkable durability of that world orderwhich has remained the dominant fact of international life long after the end of the Cold Warmakes a careful examination of Achesonas diplomacy especially relevant to todayas international challenges.

Acheson

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Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 9780684864822
Total Pages : 512 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (648 download)

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Book Synopsis Acheson by : James Chace

Download or read book Acheson written by James Chace and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-06-30 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acheson is the first complete biography of the most important and controversial secretary of state of the twentieth century. More than any other of the renowned "Wise Men" who together proposed our vision of the world in the aftermath of World War II, Dean Acheson was the quintessential man of action. Drawing on Acheson family diaries and letters as well as recent revelations from Russian and Chinese archives, historian James Chace traces Acheson's remarkable life, from his days as a schoolboy at Groton and his carefree life at Yale to his work for President Franklin Roosevelt on international financial policy and his unique partnership with President Truman. Acheson was a housemate of Cole Porter's at Harvard Law School, a protégé of Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter's, a friend of poet Archibald MacLeish's, a key adviser to General George Marshall, and a confidant of Winston Churchill's. Serving as Truman's secretary of state from 1949 to 1953, he was indeed "present at the creation," as he entitled his memoirs. More than any other of Truman's powerful and glamorous advisers, Acheson conceived the shape of the postwar world and mastered the policies that ensured its birth and endurance. He was the driving force behind the Truman Doctrine to contain the Soviet Union's expansionist ambitions; the Marshall Plan to rebuild the shattered economies of Europe; and NATO, the military alliance that would bind Western Europe and the United States and keep the Soviet Union firmly behind the Iron Curtain until it collapsed. Chace corrects many misconceptions about Acheson's role in the Cold War. Acheson was not one of the original Cold Warriors. In 1945, willing to acknowledge Soviet concerns about its security, Acheson worked closely with Secretary of War Henry Stimson on a plan to share America's scientific information about atomic energy with Moscow in order to avert an arms race. It was only when Moscow made threatening demands on Turkey for bases in the Dardanelles that Acheson hardened his views toward the Soviet Union. Acheson's initial approach toward Communist China was similarly nonideological. He had little sympathy for Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists on Taiwan and, until the outbreak of the Korean War, held out hope that the United States would soon recognize Mao Zedong's regime as the legitimate government of China. Acheson's early pragmatism toward Moscow and Beijing, and his refusal to denounce Alger Hiss, a State Department colleague accused of being a Communist, earned him the enmity of the McCarthyites, who accused Acheson of having "lost" China and of sabotaging General Douglas MacArthur in Korea. Later, Acheson encouraged President Kennedy to stand firm against the Soviets in the Berlin Wall and Cuban missile crises. He headed a group of elder statesmen who advised President Johnson on the Vietnam War. When Acheson turned against the war, Johnson realized that domestic support for his policy had crumbled. Acheson is a masterful biography of a great statesman whose policies won the Cold War. It is also an important and dramatic work of history chronicling the momentous decisions, events, and fascinating personalities of the most critical decades of the American Century.

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

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Author :
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 1324064609
Total Pages : 858 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (24 download)

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Book Synopsis Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department by : Dean Acheson

Download or read book Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department written by Dean Acheson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1987-09-17 with total page 858 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize With deft portraits of many world figures, Dean Acheson analyzes the processes of policy making, the necessity for decision, and the role of power and initiative in matters of state. Acheson (1893–1971) was not only present at the creation of the postwar world, he was one of its chief architects. He joined the Department of State in 1941 as Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and, with brief intermissions, was continuously involved until 1953, when he left office as Secretary of State at the end of the Truman years. Throughout that time Acheson's was one of the most influential minds and strongest wills at work. It was a period that included World War II, the reconstruction of Europe, the Korean War, the development of nuclear power, the formation of the United Nations and NATO. It involved him at close quarters with a cast that starred Truman, Roosevelt, Churchill, de Gaulle, Marshall, MacArthur, Eisenhower, Attlee, Eden Bevin, Schuman, Dulles, de Gasperi, Adenauer, Yoshida, Vishinsky, and Molotov.

Present at the Creation

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Author :
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 9780393304121
Total Pages : 858 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (41 download)

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Book Synopsis Present at the Creation by : Dean Acheson

Download or read book Present at the Creation written by Dean Acheson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1970 with total page 858 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author relates his experiences in the State Department during a period that witnessed World War II, European reconstruction, the Korean War and McCarthyism.

Dean Acheson

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199700125
Total Pages : 832 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (997 download)

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Book Synopsis Dean Acheson by : Robert L. Beisner

Download or read book Dean Acheson written by Robert L. Beisner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-06 with total page 832 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dean Acheson was one of the most influential Secretaries of State in U.S. history, presiding over American foreign policy during a pivotal era--the decade after World War II when the American Century slipped into high gear. During his vastly influential career, Acheson spearheaded the greatest foreign policy achievements in modern times, ranging from the Marshall Plan to the establishment of NATO. In this acclaimed biography, Robert L. Beisner paints an indelible portrait of one of the key figures of the last half-century. In a book filled with insight based on research in government archives, memoirs, letters, and diaries, Beisner illuminates Acheson's major triumphs, including the highly underrated achievement of converting West Germany and Japan from mortal enemies to prized allies, and does not shy away from examining his missteps. But underlying all his actions, Beisner shows, was a tough-minded determination to outmatch the strength of the Soviet bloc--indeed, to defeat the Soviet Union at every turn. The book also sheds light on Acheson's friendship with Truman--one, a bourbon-drinking mid-Westerner with a homespun disposition, the other, a mustachioed Connecticut dandy who preferred perfect martinis. Over six foot tall, with steel blue, "merry, searching eyes" and a "wolfish" grin, Dean Acheson was an unforgettable character--intellectually brilliant, always debonair, and tough as tempered steel. This lustrous portrait of an immensely accomplished and colorful life is the epitome of the biographer's art.

Dean Acheson and the Obligations of Power

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Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1538100029
Total Pages : 307 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (381 download)

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Book Synopsis Dean Acheson and the Obligations of Power by : Michael F. Hopkins

Download or read book Dean Acheson and the Obligations of Power written by Michael F. Hopkins and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-03-17 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dean Acheson was the most influential American diplomat of the twentieth century. He shaped the pivotal shift in American foreign policy from isolation to engagement in global affairs, This critical re-evaluation of Acheson’s public career analyzes his advocacy of intervention against Germany and Japan in 1939-1941, work on sanctions against Japan in 1941, contribution to the creation of new international institutions, and campaigns to secure the support of Congress and the American public. It scrutinizes his crucial role in the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, NATO, the formation of democratic governments in Germany and Japan, and involvement in the Korean War. It examines his advice on Europe and Vietnam to presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. Acheson was the architect of the policy of containing the Soviet Union that endured to the end of the Cold War. The book argues that Acheson was slower to abandon the prospect of understandings with the Soviets and the communists in China than his memoirs claim; his focus on the North Atlantic did not exclude his deep concern for Asian; and the policy of containment was part of his wider belief that American power brought the obligation to promote a stable international order.

The Wise Men

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 0684837714
Total Pages : 852 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (848 download)

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Book Synopsis The Wise Men by : Walter Isaacson

Download or read book The Wise Men written by Walter Isaacson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1997-06-04 with total page 852 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A captivating blend of personal biography and public drama, The Wise Men introduces the original best and brightest, leaders whose outsized personalities and actions brought order to postwar chaos: Averell Harriman, the freewheeling diplomat and Roosevelt's special envoy to Churchill and Stalin; Dean Acheson, the secretary of state who was more responsible for the Truman Doctrine than Truman and for the Marshall Plan than General Marshall; George Kennan, self-cast outsider and intellectual darling of the Washington elite; Robert Lovett, assistant secretary of war, undersecretary of state, and secretary of defense throughout the formative years of the Cold War; John McCloy, one of the nation's most influential private citizens; and Charles Bohlen, adroit diplomat and ambassador to the Soviet Union.

The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War

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Author :
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 030014265X
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War by : Campbell Craig

Download or read book The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War written by Campbell Craig and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-08-28 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of nuclear warfare’s key role in triggering the post-World War II confrontation between the US and the USSR After a devastating world war, culminating in the obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was clear that the United States and the Soviet Union had to establish a cooperative order if the planet was to escape an atomic World War III. In this provocative study, Campbell Craig and Sergey Radchenko show how the atomic bomb pushed the United States and the Soviet Union not toward cooperation but toward deep bipolar confrontation. Joseph Stalin, sure that the Americans meant to deploy their new weapon against Russia and defeat socialism, would stop at nothing to build his own bomb. Harry Truman, initially willing to consider cooperation, discovered that its pursuit would mean political suicide, especially when news of Soviet atomic spies reached the public. Both superpowers, moreover, discerned a new reality of the atomic age: now, cooperation must be total. The dangers posed by the bomb meant that intermediate measures of international cooperation would protect no one. Yet no two nations in history were less prepared to pursue total cooperation than were the United States and the Soviet Union. The logic of the bomb pointed them toward immediate Cold War. “Sprightly and well-argued…. The complicated history of how the bomb influenced the start of the war has never been explored so well."—Lloyd Gardner, Rutgers University “An outstanding new interpretation of the origins of the Cold War that gives equal weight to American and Soviet perspectives on the conflict that shaped the contemporary world.”—Geoffrey Roberts, author of Stalin’s Wars

The Trials of Harry S. Truman

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1501102907
Total Pages : 576 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (11 download)

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Book Synopsis The Trials of Harry S. Truman by : Jeffrey Frank

Download or read book The Trials of Harry S. Truman written by Jeffrey Frank and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-03-14 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jeffrey Frank, author of the bestselling Ike and Dick, returns with the “beguiling” (The New York Times) first full account of the Truman presidency in nearly thirty years, recounting how a seemingly ordinary man met the extraordinary challenge of leading America through the pivotal years of the mid-20th century. The nearly eight years of Harry Truman’s presidency—among the most turbulent in American history—were marked by victory in the wars against Germany and Japan; the first use of an atomic bomb and the development of far deadlier weapons; the start of the Cold War and the creation of the NATO alliance; the Marshall Plan to rebuild the wreckage of postwar Europe; the Red Scare; and the fateful decision to commit troops to fight a costly “limited war” in Korea. Historians have tended to portray Truman as stolid and decisive, with a homespun manner, but the man who emerges in The Trials of Harry S. Truman is complex and surprising. He believed that the point of public service was to improve the lives of one’s fellow citizens and fought for a national health insurance plan. While he was disturbed by the brutal treatment of African Americans and came to support stronger civil rights laws, he never relinquished the deep-rooted outlook of someone with Confederate ancestry reared in rural Missouri. He was often carried along by the rush of events and guided by men who succeeded in refining his fixed and facile view of the postwar world. And while he prided himself on his Midwestern rationality, he could act out of instinct and combativeness, as when he asserted a president’s untested power to seize the nation’s steel mills. The Truman who emerges in these pages is a man with generous impulses, loyal to friends and family, and blessed with keen political instincts, but insecure, quick to anger, and prone to hasty decisions. Archival discoveries, and research that led from Missouri to Washington, Berlin and Korea, have contributed to an indelible and “intimate” (The Washington Post) portrait of a man, born in the 19th century, who set the nation on a course that reverberates in the 21st century, a leader who never lost a schoolboy’s love for his country and its Constitution.

America and the Postwar World: Remaking International Society, 1945-1956

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351238426
Total Pages : 409 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (512 download)

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Book Synopsis America and the Postwar World: Remaking International Society, 1945-1956 by : David Mayers

Download or read book America and the Postwar World: Remaking International Society, 1945-1956 written by David Mayers and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-03-13 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main tide of international relations scholarship on the first years after World War II sweeps toward Cold War accounts. These have emphasized the United States and USSR in a context of geopolitical rivalry, with concomitant attention upon the bristling security state. Historians have also extensively analyzed the creation of an economic order (Bretton Woods), mainly designed by Americans and tailored to their interests, but resisted by peoples residing outside of North America, Western Europe, and Japan. This scholarship, centered on the Cold War as vortex and a reconfigured world economy, is rife with contending schools of interpretation and, bolstered by troves of declassified archival documents, will support investigations and writing into the future. By contrast, this book examines a past that ran concurrent with the Cold War and interacted with it, but which usefully can also be read as separable: Washington in the first years after World War II, and in response to that conflagration, sought to redesign international society. That society was then, and remains, an admittedly amorphous thing. Yet it has always had a tangible aspect, drawing self-regarding states into occasional cooperation, mediated by treaties, laws, norms, diplomatic customs, and transnational institutions. The U.S.-led attempt during the first postwar years to salvage international society focused on the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, the Acheson–Lilienthal plan to contain the atomic arms race, the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals to force Axis leaders to account, the 1948 Genocide Convention, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the founding of the United Nations. None of these initiatives was transformative, not individually or collectively. Yet they had an ameliorative effect, traces of which have touched the twenty-first century—in struggles to curb the proliferation of nuclear weapons, bring war criminals to justice, create laws supportive of human rights, and maintain an aspirational United Nations, still striving to retain meaningfulness amid world hazards. Together these partially realized innovations and frameworks constitute, if nothing else, a point of moral reference, much needed as the border between war and peace has become blurred and the consequences of a return to unrestraint must be harrowing.

A Covenant with Power

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Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 278 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis A Covenant with Power by : Lloyd C. Gardner

Download or read book A Covenant with Power written by Lloyd C. Gardner and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1984 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bibliographic notes and index.

The World America Made

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Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0345802713
Total Pages : 161 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (458 download)

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Book Synopsis The World America Made by : Robert Kagan

Download or read book The World America Made written by Robert Kagan and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-01-29 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Kagan, the New York Times bestselling author of Of Paradise and Power and one of the country’s most influential strategic thinkers, reaffirms the importance of United States’s global leadership in this timely and important book. Upon its initial publication, The World America Made became one of the most talked about political books of the year, influencing Barack Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address and shaping the thought of both the Obama and Romney presidential campaigns. In these incisive and engaging pages, Kagan responds to those who anticipate—or even long for—a post-American world order by showing what a decline in America’s influence would truly mean for the United States and the rest of the world, as the vital institutions, economies, and ideals currently supported by American power wane or disappear. As Kagan notes, it has happened before: one need only to consider the consequences of the breakdown of the Roman Empire and the collapse of the European order in World War I. This book is a powerful warning that America need not and dare not decline by committing preemptive superpower suicide.

Dean Acheson and the Making of U.S. Foreign Policy

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Author :
Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 9780333567357
Total Pages : 271 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (673 download)

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Book Synopsis Dean Acheson and the Making of U.S. Foreign Policy by : Douglas Brinkley

Download or read book Dean Acheson and the Making of U.S. Foreign Policy written by Douglas Brinkley and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 1993-02-09 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: President Truman's Secretary of State (1949-53), Dean Acheson was a crucial figure in the shaping of the postwar world. In an astonishingly creative and demanding tenure Acheson was involved to a degree seldom realized today in a huge range of issues: from the creation of NATO to the Korean War. The result of a major commemorative conference, this volume brings together ten distinguished diplomatic historians, commissioned to write on various aspects of Acheson's career, based on primary archival research.

Affection and Trust

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Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 0803245262
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (32 download)

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Book Synopsis Affection and Trust by : Harry S. Truman

Download or read book Affection and Trust written by Harry S. Truman and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this collection, published for the first time, we follow Harry S. Truman and Dean Acheson, two giants of the post-World War II period, as they move from an official relationship to one of candor, humor, and personal expression. In these letters, spanning the years from when both were newly out of office until Acheson's death at age 78, we find them sharing the often surprising opinions, ideas, and feelings that the strictures of their offices had previously kept them from revealing. They felt a powerful need to keep in touch as they viewed with dismay what they considered to be the Eisenhower administration's fumbling of foreign affairs and the impact of Joseph McCarthy. After Kennedy won in 1960, they discussed Acheson's reluctant involvement in the Cuban missile crisis and the Allied position in Berlin--From publisher description.

Maximalist

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Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307388301
Total Pages : 418 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (73 download)

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Book Synopsis Maximalist by : Stephen Sestanovich

Download or read book Maximalist written by Stephen Sestanovich and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-10-14 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American foreign policy since World War II has long been seen primarily as a story of strong and successful alliances, domestic consensus, and continuity from one adminstration to the next. Why then have so many presidents left office condemned for their foreign policy record? In his fresh and compelling history of America's rise to dominance, Stephen Sestanovich makes clear that U.S. diplomacy has always stirred controversy, both at home and abroad. He shows how successive adminstrations have struggled to find new solutions, alternating between bold "maximalist" strategies and retrenchment efforts to downsize America's role. Almost all our presidents emerge from this vivid retelling in a sharp and unexpected light.

The Cambridge History of America and the World: Volume 4, 1945 to the Present

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108317855
Total Pages : 903 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (83 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cambridge History of America and the World: Volume 4, 1945 to the Present by : David C. Engerman

Download or read book The Cambridge History of America and the World: Volume 4, 1945 to the Present written by David C. Engerman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-03 with total page 903 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fourth volume of The Cambridge History of America and the World examines the heights of American global power in the mid-twentieth century and how challenges from at home and abroad altered the United States and its role in the world. The second half of the twentieth century marked the pinnacle of American global power in economic, political, and cultural terms, but even as it reached such heights, the United States quickly faced new challenges to its power, originating both domestically and internationally. Highlighting cutting-edge ideas from scholars from all over the world, this volume anatomizes American power as well as the counters and alternatives to 'the American empire.' Topics include US economic and military power, American culture overseas, human rights and humanitarianism, third-world internationalism, immigration, communications technology, and the Anthropocene.

Murrow's Cold War

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Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 1612347711
Total Pages : 399 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (123 download)

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Book Synopsis Murrow's Cold War by : Gregory M. Tomlin

Download or read book Murrow's Cold War written by Gregory M. Tomlin and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2016-05-01 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In March 1961 America’s most prominent journalist, Edward R. Murrow, ended a quarter-century career with the Columbia Broadcasting System to join the administration of John F. Kennedy as director of the United States Information Agency (USIA). Charged with promoting a positive image abroad, the agency sponsored overseas research programs, produced documentaries, and operated the Voice of America to spread the country’s influence throughout the world. As director of the USIA, Murrow hired African Americans for top spots in the agency and leveraged his celebrity status at home to challenge all Americans to correct the scourge of domestic racism that discouraged developing countries, viewed as strategic assets, from aligning with the West. Using both overt and covert propaganda programs, Murrow forged a positive public image for Kennedy administration policies in an unsettled era that included the rise of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and support for Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem. Murrow’s Cold War tackles an understudied portion of Murrow’s life, reveals how one of America’s most revered journalists improved the global perception of the United States, and exposes the importance of public diplomacy in the advancement of U.S. foreign policy.