Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776 - Softcover

McDougall, Walter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0395901324 ISBN 13: 9780395901328

Publisher: Harper Paperbacks, 1998

Synopsis

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Walter McDougall reinterprets the traditions that have shaped U.S. foreign policy from 1776 to the present in "an entertaining and iconoclastic fashion" (Philadelphia Inquirer).

In a concise analysis, McDougall divides American diplomatic history into two stages, which he calls "Old Testament" and "New Testament" phases.

The “Old Testament” phase, which ran from the Revolution to the 1890s, centered on protecting and perfecting America within. The "New Testament" phase, from the Spanish-American War to the present, is more interventionist, featuring competing ideals of containment, expansion, and meliorism. Within the “testament” phases, McDougall goes on to further categorize eight conflicting schools of thought.

Conversational in tone and highly educational, readers will appreciate McDougall’s astute observations and overview of American foreign policy. Crucially, McDougall contends that by projecting U.S. standards and ideals onto other countries, the U.S. repeatedly overextends its resources and pays too a high a price for assuming such risk.

In Promised Land, Crusader State, "McDougall has written a lively and provocative book" (Wall Street Journal) that is "a rich study of the American experience" (Los Angeles Times).

About this title

About the Author

Walter A. McDougall received the Pulitzer Prize in history in 1986. A professor of international relations and history at the University of Pennsylvania and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Reasearch Institute, he lives in Philadelphia.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0395901324
• ISBN 13: 9780395901328
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304