In the Time of the Americans - Hardcover

Fromkin, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0394589017 ISBN 13: 9780394589015

Publisher: Knopf, 1995

Synopsis

Profiling five Americans whose careers shaped the course of history, a political study examines the shared goals and distinct personalities of FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Marshall, and MacArthur. 35,000 first printing. $45,000 ad/promo.

About this title

About the Author

David Fromkin is Professor of International Relations, History, and Law at Boston University.

Reviews

Inspired by President Woodrow Wilson's idealistic internationalism, three subsequent U.S. presidents?Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower?steered Americans away from isolationism to support an active, major role for the U.S. on the world stage. Under their leadership, America helped defeat Hitler, waged a Cold War against Soviet tyranny and checked Chinese communist aggression in Korea. Fromkin's dramatic, engaging political, military and diplomatic history yokes FDR, Truman and Ike in a group portrait with George Marshall, architect of America's postwar financial program to reconstruct Western Europe, and General Douglas MacArthur, WWII hero and commander of U.S. and U.N. forces in Korea. In a panoramic canvas peopled by George Kennan, Joseph Kennedy, John Foster Dulles, Felix Frankfurter, William Randolph Hearst and many others, Fromkin (A Peace to End All Peace) argues that America, acting with mixed motives but without imperial designs, opposed Europe's imperialisms, whether British, German, French or Soviet, and played a key role in destroying them. Fromkin is a Boston University professor of international relations, history and law.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Fromkin's best-selling A Peace to End All Peace (1989) described "the final achievement of European imperialism" in the Middle East. This new study focuses on a "coherent generation" --the subtitle's presidents and generals, plus some U.S. politicians, statesmen, and journalists--that "defined America's role in the international politics of the twentieth century." It is a well-written and entertaining study, but profoundly conventional history. It takes Fromkin pages to note that the turn-of-the-century Americans he describes as innocent, pacifist, isolationist, and anti-imperialist did "bellicose" things to "Indians and others" who stood in their way. Five pages after he points out that Haym Solomon (an ancestor of William C. Bullitt) helped to finance the American Revolution, Fromkin describes the U.S. as "entirely Christian" until 1890. And his "generation" is, of course, composed entirely of white men. Readers who idolize this generation of U.S. internationalists--as so many of them venerated TR and Woodrow Wilson--will certainly want to read this book, but librarians will want to remember that Fromkin tells only part of the story. Mary Carroll

The generation born in the 1880s came of age in the cataclysm of World War I, bore the brunt of leading our nation in World War II, and laid the ground rules for the Cold War. Although this generation has passed from the scene, Fromkin (A Peace To End All Peace, Holt, 1989) has created an exceptional collective biography in examining the forces that shaped the thinking and decision-making of that memorable group of men, led by FDR, who in turn shaped the political world in which we live. Similar to Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas's The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (S.&S., 1988) and, more recently, David Mayers's The Ambassadors and America's Soviet Policy (LJ 2/1/95), Fromkin's book ranges widely among his subjects in weaving together a sophisticated survey of our century as we moved from a nation intent on isolationism to one with world leadership responsibilities thrust upon it. This well-written history is highly recommended for all collections.?Ed Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0394589017
• ISBN 13: 9780394589015
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 618