Inspired and led by sporting magnate Albert Goodwill Spalding, two teams of baseball players circled the globe for six months in 1888-1889 competing in such far away destinations as Australia, Sri Lanka and Egypt. These players, however, represented much more than mere pleasure-seekers. In this lively narrative, Zeiler explores the ways in which the Spalding World Baseball Tour drew on elements of cultural diplomacy to inject American values and power into the international arena. Through his chronicle of baseball history, games, and experiences, Zeiler explores expressions of imperial dreams through globalization's instruments of free enterprise, webs of modern communication and transport, cultural ordering of races and societies, and a strident nationalism that galvanized notions of American uniqueness. Spalding linked baseball to a U.S. presence overseas, viewing the world as a market ripe for the infusion of American ideas, products and energy. Through globalization during the Gilded Age, he and other Americans penetrated the globe and laid the foundation for an empire formally acquired just a decade after their tour.

Inspired and led by sporting magnate Albert Goodwill Spalding, two teams of baseball players circled the globe for six months in 1888-1889 competing in such far away destinations as Australia, Sri Lanka and Egypt. These players, however, represented much more than mere pleasure-seekers. In this lively narrative, Zeiler explores the ways in which the Spalding World Baseball Tour drew on elements of cultural diplomacy to inject American values and power into the international arena. Through his chronicle of baseball history, games, and experiences, Zeiler explores expressions of imperial dreams through globalization's instruments of free enterprise, webs of modern communication and transport, cultural ordering of races and societies, and a strident nationalism that galvanized notions of American uniqueness. Spalding linked baseball to a U.S. presence overseas, viewing the world as a market ripe for the infusion of American ideas, products and energy. Through globalization during the Gilded Age, he and other Americans penetrated the globe and laid the foundation for an empire formally acquired just a decade after their tour.

A wide-ranging history of modern America that argues that free trade has been an engine of US foreign policy and the key to global prosperity. Surprisingly, exports and imports, tariffs and quotas, and trade deficits and surpluses are central to American foreign relations. Ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt took office during the Great Depression, the United States has linked trade to its long-term diplomatic objectives and national security. Washington, DC saw free trade as underscoring its international leadership and as instrumental to global prosperity, to winning wars and peace, and to shaping the liberal internationalist world order. Free trade, in short, was a cornerstone of an ideology of "capitalist peace." Covering nearly a century, Capitalist Peace provides the first chronologically sweeping look at the intersection of trade and diplomacy. This policy has been pursued oftentimes at a cost to US producers and workers, whose interests were sacrificed to serve the purpose of grand strategy. To be sure, capitalists sought a particular type of global trade, which harnessed the market through free trade. This liberal trade policy sought the common good as defined by the needs, aims, and strengths of the capitalist and democratic world. Leaders believed that free trade advanced private enterprise, which, in turn, promoted prosperity, democracy, security, and attendant by-products like development, cooperation, integration, and human rights. The capitalist peace took liberalization as integral to cooperation among nations and even to morality in global affairs. Drawing on new research from the Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush presidential libraries, as well as business/ industry and civic association archives, Thomas W. Zeiler narrates this history from the road to World War II, through the Cold War, to the resurgent protectionism of the Trump era and up to the present. Offering a new interpretation of diplomatic history, Capitalist Peace shows how US power, interests, and values were projected into the international arena even as capitalism brought both positive and negative results to the global order.

Global Interdependence provides a new account of world history from the end of World War II to the present, an era when transnational communities began to challenge the long domination of the nation-state. In this single-volume survey, leading scholars elucidate the political, economic, cultural, and environmental forces that have shaped the planet in the past sixty years. Offering fresh insight into international politics since 1945, Wilfried Loth examines how miscalculations by both the United States and the Soviet Union brought about a Cold War conflict that was not necessarily inevitable. Thomas Zeiler explains how American free-market principles spurred the creation of an entirely new economic order--a global system in which goods and money flowed across national borders at an unprecedented rate, fueling growth for some nations while also creating inequalities in large parts of the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa. From an environmental viewpoint, J. R. McNeill and Peter Engelke contend that humanity has entered a new epoch, the Anthropocene era, in which massive industrialization and population growth have become the most powerful influences upon global ecology. Petra Goedde analyzes how globalization has impacted indigenous cultures and questions the extent to which a generic culture has erased distinctiveness and authenticity. She shows how, paradoxically, the more cultures blended, the more diversified they became as well. Combining these different perspectives, volume editor Akira Iriye presents a model of transnational historiography in which individuals and groups enter history not primarily as citizens of a country but as migrants, tourists, artists, and missionaries--actors who create networks that transcend traditional geopolitical boundaries.

From its modest beginnings in rural America to its current status as an entertainment industry in postindustrial America enjoyed worldwide by millions each season, the linkages between baseball's evolution and our nation's history are undeniable. Through war, depression, times of tumultuous upheaval and of great prosperity - baseball has been held up as our national pastime: the single greatest expression of America's values and ideals. Combining a comprehensive history of the game with broader analyses of America's historical and cultural developments, National Pastime encapsulates the values that have allowed it to endure: hope, tradition, escape, revolution. While nostalgia, scandal, malaise and triumph are contained within the study of any American historical moment, we see in this book that the tensions and developments within the game of baseball afford the best window into a deeper understanding of America's past, its purpose, and its principles.

Guide to U.S. Economic Policy shows students and researchers how issues and actions are translated into public policies for resolving economic problems (like the Great Recession) or managing economic conflict (like the left-right ideological split over the role of government regulation in markets). Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the guide highlights decision-making cycles requiring the cooperation of government, business, and an informed citizenry to achieve a comprehensive approach to a successful, growth-oriented economic policy. Through 30 topical, operational, and relational essays, the book addresses the development of U.S. economic policies from the colonial period to today; the federal agencies and public and private organizations that influence and administer economic policies; the challenges of balancing economic development with environmental and social goals; and the role of the U.S. in international organizations such as the IMF and WTO. Key Features: 30 essays by experts in the field investigate the fundamental economic, political, social, and process initiatives that drive policy decisions affecting the nation's economic stability and success. Essential themes traced throughout the chapters include scarcity, wealth creation, theories of economic growth and macroeconomic management, controlling inflation and unemployment, poverty, the role of government agencies and regulations to police markets, Congress vs. the president, investment policies, economic indicators, the balance of trade, and the immediate and long-term costs associated with economic policy alternatives. A glossary of key economic terms and events, a summary of bureaus and agencies charged with economic policy decisions, a master bibliography, and a thorough index appear at the back of the book.

Alfred Eckes and Thomas Zeiler argue that the "American Century" of global leadership resulted from revolutionary improvements in technology combined with the leadership elite's enthusiasm for free trade. The authors reveal how this formula helped the nation rise to economic power after the Spanish-American War, and win both world wars and the Cold War. America's power and cultural influence soared as business and financial interests pursued global market dominance in the following decade. But the tragic events of September 2001 and the growing volatility of global finance raise questions as to whether the era of American-led globalization is sustainable.

Alfred Eckes and Thomas Zeiler argue that the "American Century" of global leadership resulted from revolutionary improvements in technology combined with the leadership elite's enthusiasm for free trade. The authors reveal how this formula helped the nation rise to economic power after the Spanish-American War, and win both world wars and the Cold War. America's power and cultural influence soared as business and financial interests pursued global market dominance in the following decade. But the tragic events of September 2001 and the growing volatility of global finance raise questions as to whether the era of American-led globalization is sustainable.