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Title: The American Century:: The Rise and Decline of the United States As a World Power by Donald W. White ISBN: 0-300-05721-0 Publisher: Yale University Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 1996 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $50.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (3 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Power Corrupts
Comment: In "The American Century: The Rise and Decline of the United States As a World Power," a solid, if sometimes somnolent history of the U.S. in the post-war period, Donald Wallace White entertains a couple of provocative ideas about the U.S. in the post WWII period that I found particularly illuminating.
One is that the expenditures for building the vast military industrial complex had a dampening effect both on the development of new technologies and U.S. productivity that took America on a precipitous ride from greatest economic power the world had ever seen to a debtor nation within the space of generation. He recalls an ironic comment by Keynes who, in discussing the end of Great Britain's world economic dominance, likened the economic policy of its decline to the throwing bales of money into depleted coal mines, waiting a while, then digging it up later and accounting it as the creation of new wealth. America's great wealth instead of being invested into new production capacity, instead of using it as a spur to technological innovation after WWII, it was thrown in that bottomless pit called defense spending from which little innovation arose. That wealth became inert, deadly both in actual fact and in its effect on the economy. Once war preparations began, it became necessary to use the materiel, and so under the rubric of the Communist threat, Kennedy told the world America would "bear any burden." The burden was the most expensive deadly and divisive war in American history -- a war that signaled the end of America's short-lived leadership of the free world. Within a generation, America (whose people had had enjoyed a world reputation as charitable, friendly, producers of the world's best consumer goods, more than willing to share their know-how and their wealth with the world), were led into one of the last colonial wars, led there by unilateralist, short-sighted policies, driven by nearly irrational fears of the communist threat. White argues that this grab toward power hollowed us out, allowing us to be quickly overtaken by those WWII allies who did not shovel their wealth into missile silos, but who learned from American production models of a generation before and within a generation were able to outproduce their teachers.
His second major point is that at the end of the Second World War, there were two major myths of American power informing American policy, and American's perceptions of themselves. One, Henry Luce's, was "The American Century," the other was Henry Wallace's "The Century of the Common Man." Immediately after the War, Americans subscribed to the latter discourse, treating not only our WWII allies as worthy of our help, but the entire "developing world" as well. Using the public works administration model developed under FDR's New Deal, Fiorello LaGuardia was put in charge of an international program that collected and redistributed food and goods and knowledge -- a kind of international clearinghouse to which many states contributed. The point he makes is that this idea was based on a universalistic ideal: that a new day of cooperation was dawning and that Americans would help set an example of mutual respect and caring. Luce's "American Century" discourse, on the other hand, was based on the assumption of Great Britain's former role, creating and enforcing a "Pax Americana." It was this view, White shows, that prevailed through such vehicles as the Marshall Plan, which, though beneficial to our former allies, wrote off large parts of the world as second class citizens who would just have to wait until we could get to them.
Writing history using both popular (Life, Look magazine) and elitist sources (Foreign Affairs, National Review) as well as the usual sources, including declassified government documents, White immerses us in post WWII America. For those who lived through it, and especially for those who did not it offers an invaluable perspective on the near miss America made as it reached out with the idea of universal human rights, justice and abundance, but grasped instead the mantle of military power. But we were not the only victims -- the same happened to the Soviets. The overproduction of war materiel eventually destroyed them as well. Stuck in their own version of the Fordist production model, burying their wealth in bombs, too, the Soviet empire, like the various European colonial empires that preceded it, disintegrated.
White also does a great job of detailing the discourses that fed and this departure from America's initial goals. He's good at describing the inexperienced, naive, hopeful early attempts and building a better world through such vehicles as the United Nations. He also analyzes the "consensus" discourse promulgated by the historians of the time: Endless regurgitations of the idea that as a country blessed with natural abundance, technological know- how, and the best darn political system in the world, America was ready to take the world stage as the leader of the free world.
He also introduces us to the "realists," the school of foreign policy led by Henry Kissinger who promulgated the notion of the balance of power which in practice meant playing one state against another. We can see the effects of that policy now in Afghanistan. Through the realists and the influence of the American business community a new tool was sharpened and brandished: the free market ideology and the dominance of financial markets -- America's lastest weapon of choice, just as it had been for the previous only "superpower" -- Great Britain.
An often insightful view of how we got here, and how with startling speed the national consensus and our great expectations foundered on the shoals of hubris, fear and greed.
Rating: 4
Summary: Downfall of imperial America
Comment: This is a cultural and intellectual history of the USA's evolving status as a world power in the twentieth century. It studies how America's people, especially its leaders, perceived America's role in the world in the years since 1945, during its brief dominance and subsequent decline. It also provokes some serious thinking about why nations rise and fall, and about how peoples can rebuild their countries.
The US ruling class's preference for empire over industry undermined the economy. Excessive military spending ran up the world's largest debts. The trade deficit ballooned, the dollar had to be devalued. The Vietnamese people's defeat of the US state in 1975 ended its predominance and forced its retrenchment. Its regional alliances fell - SEATO in 1977, CENTO in 1979, ANZUS in the 1980s.
"The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America", as Martin Luther King said. Maintaining the US state's world role reduced the general standard of living. It also increased the USA's dependence on imports, both of capital and of manufactured goods. Lack of investment led to waste of resources, wanton consumption, and poor-quality, low-efficiency production. The loss of hope for general social improvement led to the divisions of ethnicity, rather than to the ethics of unity.
America needs to rebuild its economy and society. The American people need to channel funds away from the dominant military machine, away from the state's unlimited foreign commitments and interventions. They need to invest the money in industry, transport, housing, health and education. They need to apply technology to production, to invest in producing high quality goods at low cost, to trade hard abroad and to keep their defence forces small and lean. They need a common culture based on 'the imagination and discipline of production', in White's striking phrase.
Rating: 5
Summary: Post ww2 look at American Culture from many perspectives
Comment: Donald White is a professor at New York University who has spent a lifetime gathering information about this subject. He looks at the cultural, sociological, political and economic struggles and triumphs of this era to determine just what made America great and what we did to ruin our status as a world power. Put into a broader eye view, he sites ancient cultures and their downfalls as part of the inevitable path every great civilization must take. His writing is clear and unpretentious
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