The American Century: The Rise and Decline of the United States as a World Power

By Donald W. White

Book Overview

Why did the United States assume a preeminent world role after World War II, and why has that role declined since the Vietnam War? This magisterial book--the first intellectual and cultural history of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300057210
• ISBN13: 9780300057218
• Release Date: November 1996
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 564 Pages
• Weight: 2.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.8" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Power Corrupts

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

Downfall of imperial America

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.

Post ww2 look at American Culture from many perspectives

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