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7%OFFJohn A. Thompson - A Sense of Power: The Roots of America´s Global Role - 9780801447891 - V9780801447891
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A Sense of Power: The Roots of America´s Global Role

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Description for A Sense of Power: The Roots of America´s Global Role Hardback. Num Pages: 360 pages. BIC Classification: 1KBB; 3JJ; 3JM; HBJK; HBLW; HBLX; JPS. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 235 x 156 x 28. Weight in Grams: 657.

Why has the United States assumed so extensive and costly a role in world affairs over the last hundred years? The two most common answers to this question are "because it could" and "because it had to." Neither answer will do, according to this challenging re-assessment of the way that America came to assume its global role. The country’s vast economic resources gave it the capacity to exercise great influence abroad, but Americans were long reluctant to meet the costs of wielding that power. Neither the country’s safety from foreign attack nor its economic well-being required the achievement of ambitious ... Read more

In A Sense of Power, John A. Thompson takes a long view of America’s dramatic rise as a world power, from the late nineteenth century into the post–World War II era. How, and more importantly why, has America come to play such a dominant role in world affairs? There is, he argues, no simple answer. Thompson challenges conventional explanations of America’s involvement in World War I and World War II, seeing neither the requirements of national security nor economic interests as determining. He shows how American leaders from Wilson to Truman developed an ever more capacious understanding of the national interest, and why by the 1940s most Americans came to support the price tag, in blood and treasure, attached to strenuous efforts to shape the world. The beliefs and emotions that led them to do so reflected distinctive aspects of U.S. culture, not least the strength of ties to Europe. Consciousness of the nation’s unique power fostered feelings of responsibility, entitlement, and aspiration among the people and leaders of the United States.

This original analysis challenges some widely held beliefs about the determinants of United States foreign policy and will bring new insight to contemporary debates about whether the nation should—or must—play so active a part in world politics.

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Product Details

Format
Hardback
Publication date
2015
Publisher
Cornell University Press United States
Number of pages
360
Condition
New
Number of Pages
360
Place of Publication
Ithaca, United States
ISBN
9780801447891
SKU
V9780801447891
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 15 to 20 working days
Ref
99-99

About John A. Thompson
John A. Thompson is Emeritus Reader in American History at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Reformers and War: American Progressive Publicists and the First World War and Woodrow Wilson: A Profile in Power.

Reviews for A Sense of Power: The Roots of America´s Global Role
A Sense of Power is a deft, literary, and persuasive analysis of America's twentieth-century evolution from the world’s largest neutral nation to its most interventionist. Coming from a British observer and a historian of the Progressive Era who brings a fresh eye to foreign policy, it is more piquant and original than the title suggests.
Elizabeth Cobbs
Passport ... Read more

Goodreads reviews for A Sense of Power: The Roots of America´s Global Role


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