American Power: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Globalism 1918-1988

A companion to the six-part PBS series charting America's rise to global power through biographical portraits of key players. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Taft approaches this country's diplomacy in the 20th century and the entropy of American power biographically, focusing on internationalist liberals such as Averell Harriman, Chester Bowles and Henry Cabot Lodge, who tended to view the world as an extension of the United States and treated diplomacy as an extension of domestic politics. Emerging from the progressivism of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, these leaders were flag-bearers of an idealistic globalism that enjoyed great success during WW II and the immediate postwar years when America reached its apogee of influence and power. Taft ( Mayday at Yale ) describes the eclipse of that idealism during the Vietnam War, accompanied by a decline in faith of almost every kind of foreign adventure, and analyzes the reemergence of isolationist liberalism with the Star Wars dream of a self-sufficient Fortress America. The book is the companion volume to a PBS TV series. Photos.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Taft, a former editor at Harper's , has written a book that is meant to accompany a major PBS-TV series scheduled to air this winter. Taft uses the biographical approach to the history of U.S foreign policy. This style should transform easily to television; however, it makes for an uneven, forced narrative. The characters chosen to demonstrate the theme of U.S. globalism comprise a second level of power; that is, diplomats and advisers rather than presidents and secretaries. William Bullitt, George Kennan, Chester Bowles, and Ellsworth Bunker are examples. Their careers provide the backdrop to the growth of U.S. supremacy and its subsequent waning since Vietnam. Recommended for public libraries.
- Dennis Felbel, Univ. of Manitoba Libs., Winnipeg
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.