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Books > History > American history
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Why the American Century? (Paperback, New edition)
Loot Price: R831
Discovery Miles 8 310
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Why the American Century? (Paperback, New edition)
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Ever since Henry Luce, the publisher of "Time" and "Life,"
proclaimed in 1941 that the 20th century is the "American Century,"
many Americans have been trying to understand their role in it. In
a reinterpretation of America's rise to world power, this text
shows how Americans appropriated the 20th century; America's
ascension was not the result of Europe's self-destruction. By the
Second World War, Olivier Zunz argues, American policymakers,
corporate managers, engineers, and social scientists were managing
the country from within a powerful matrix of institutions devoted
to fostering new knowledge. These men and women promoted a new
social contract of abundance which was capable, in theory, of
deradicalizing class, and their efforts helped create an American
middle class defined by consumer behaviour. In the name of
democracy, they promoted a controversial ideology that stressed the
value of respecting differences among people. The result was a
culture that allowed Americans to intervene on the world scene with
the justification that they were right in doing so. The text
explores the struggles of these American elites as they tried to
maintain a democratic, modern mass society. While acknowledging the
successes of their plans, it also reveals the limits of a system
ultimately benefiting an abstract "average" consumer. Zunz goes on
to show how their principles were tested on postwar Japan while
Americans debated the respective merits of modernization and
individualism. This book restores an appreciation of the forces
that produced a unique period in American history and, at the same
time, exposes the internal contradictions that would ultimately
undermine Americans' belief in their own ideology.
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