Anyone interested in the history of U.S. foreign relations, Cold
War history, and twentieth century intellectual history will find
this impressive biography of Hans Speier, one of the most
influential figures in American defense circles of the twentieth
century, a must-read. In Democracy in Exile, Daniel Bessner shows
how the experience of the Weimar Republic’s collapse and the rise
of Nazism informed Hans Speier’s work as an American policymaker
and institution builder. Bessner delves into Speier’s
intellectual development, illuminating the ideological origins of
the expert-centered approach to foreign policymaking and revealing
the European roots of Cold War liberalism. Democracy in Exile
places Speier at the center of the influential and fascinating
transatlantic network of policymakers, many of them German
émigrés, who struggled with the tension between elite expertise
and democratic politics. Speier was one of the most prominent
intellectuals among this cohort, and Bessner traces his career, in
which he advanced from university intellectual to state expert,
holding a key position at the RAND Corporation and serving as a
powerful consultant to the State Department and Ford Foundation,
across the mid-twentieth century. Bessner depicts the critical role
Speier played in the shift in American intellectual history in
which hundreds of social scientists left their universities and
contributed to the creation of an expert-based approach to U.S.
foreign relations, in the process establishing close connections
between governmental and nongovernmental organizations. As Bessner
writes: to understand the rise of the defense intellectual, we must
understand Hans Speier.
General
Imprint: |
Cornell University Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Series: |
The United States in the World |
Release date: |
April 2018 |
First published: |
2018 |
Authors: |
Daniel Bessner
(Assistant Professor)
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 152 x 28mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Hardcover
|
Pages: |
312 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-8014-5303-8 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
0-8014-5303-8 |
Barcode: |
9780801453038 |
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