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Circumventing the Law: Rabbinic Perspectives on Loopholes and Legal Integrity (Jewish Culture and Contexts)
Par Elana Stein Hain. 2024
Circumventing the Law probes the rabbinic logic behind the use of loopholes, the legal phenomenon of finding and using gaps…
within law to achieve otherwise illegal outcomes. The logic of ha’aramah, a subset of rabbinic legal circumventions mostly defined as a tool for private life, underpins both well-known circumventions, such as selling leaven before Passover, and lesser-known mechanisms, such as designating an animal intended for sacrifice “blemished” before birth to allow it to be slaughtered for food instead. Elana Stein Hain traces the development of these loopholes over time, revealing that rabbinic literature does not consistently accept or reject loopholes. Instead, rabbinic Judaism applies categories of evasion (prohibited), avoidance (permitted), and avoision (contested) to loopholes on a case-by-case basis. The intended outcome of a given loophole determines its classification, as does the legal integrity of the circumventive process in question.Yet these understandings of loopholes are not static—instead, rabbinic attitudes toward loopholing change over time. Early works display an objective, performative understanding of the self and of intention, but evolve over time to reflect more subjective and intimate understanding of the self and intention. This evolution redefines what legal integrity means in Jewish legal philosophy.Circumventing the Law brings readers through the Second Temple period to the modern era to see how loopholing has evolved over millennia. With a focus on late antiquity, Stein Hain explores tannaitic literature, the Palestinian Talmud, and contemporaneous Greco-Roman and Persian thought to show that when warranted, Jewish rhetoric and philosophy around understandings of loopholes was a unique phenomenon that relied on changes in understanding the definition of integrity itself, a key finding for scholars of Jewish Studies and of religious and of secular law writ large.Out of Sight: The Long and Disturbing Story of Corporations Outsourcing Catastrophe
Par Erik Loomis. 2015
A provocative analysis of labor, globalization, and environmental harm by the award-winning historian and author of A History of America…
in Ten Strikes. In the current state of our globalized economy, corporations have no incentive to protect their workers or the environment. Jobs moves seamlessly across national borders while the laws that protect us from rapacious behavior remain bound by them. As a result, labor exploitation and toxic pollution remain standard practice. In Out of Sight, Erik Loomis—a historian of both the labor and environmental movements—follows a narrative that runs from the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City to the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory outside of Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 2013. He demonstrates that our modern systems of industrial production are just as dirty and abusive as they were during the Industrial Revolution and the Gilded Age. The only difference is that the ugly side of manufacturing is now hidden in faraway places where workers are most vulnerable. In this Choice Outstanding Academic Title, Loomis shows that the great environmental victories of twentieth-century America—the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the EPA—were actually union victories. Using this history as a call to action, Out of Sight proposes a path toward regulations that follow corporations wherever they do business, putting the power back in workers&’ hands. &“The story told here is tragic and important.&” —Bill McKibben &“Erik Loomis prescribes how activists can take back our country—for workers and those who care about the health of our planet.&” —Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH)This book presents a thorough analysis of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq’s memory culture, focusing particularly on commemorations and representations…
of the Anfal and Halabja atrocities. The author employs a transdisciplinary approach that draws on Memory Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Heritage Studies, Kurdish Studies, Literary Studies and Trauma Studies, to analyze cultural objects such as Kurdistani literary novels, museums, and school curricula. The book introduces two key concepts: the "phantomic museum" and the "apostrophic museum." The former explores the fragile and politicized nature of memories of missing individuals who disappeared during Saddam Hussein's genocidal campaigns and who have never been found, primarily as they return in the Halabja Monument and Peace Museum. The latter examines how the addressing – apostrophizing – of Kurdistan, in and by the Amna Suraka museum in the city of Sulaymaniyah, institutionalizes “official” and highly politicized versions of the past.Queen Caroline and the Power of Caricature in Georgian England (Queenship and Power)
Par Ian Haywood. 2023
This book will be the first dedicated study of the remarkable role of Georgian caricature in the equally remarkable Queen…
Caroline controversy of 1820-21. When the newly crowned George IV, formerly the Prince of Wales, refused to recognise his estranged wife Caroline as the rightful queen of the Britain, her refusal to rescind her claim to the throne provoked a huge campaign of sympathy and support that almost toppled the government. The British people rallied round the ‘injured’ queen in their hundreds of thousands, and massed rallies, processions, protests and petitioning became daily news.The Queen Caroline controversy was the zenith of the ‘Golden Age’ of caricature, a tour-de-force of imagination, wit, inventiveness and sheer political mischief. In image after image, Caroline triumphs over her cowardly and conniving enemies, subverting gender and political hierarchies, and giving a presence and voice to her unenfranchised followers. This book therefore aims to chronicle and analyse this achievement.The Martin Duberman Reader: The Essential Historical, Biographical, and Autobiographical Writings
Par Martin Duberman. 2013
&“A wonderful introduction to Duberman&’s writing but is also a fitting tribute to a man who has devoted his life…
to promoting social change&” (Publishers Weekly). For the past fifty years, prize-winning historian Martin Duberman&’s groundbreaking writings have established him as one of our preeminent public intellectuals. Founder of the first graduate program in LGBT studies in the country, he is perhaps best known for his biographies of Paul Robeson, Lincoln Kirstein, and Howard Zinn—works that have been hailed as &“magnificent&” (USA Today), &“enthralling&” (The Washington Post), &“splendid&” and &“definitive&” (Studs Terkel, Chicago Sun-Times), and &“refreshing and inspiring&” (The New York Times). Duberman is also an equally gifted playwright and essayist, whose piercingly honest memoirs Cures: A Gay Man&’s Odyssey and Midlife Queer have been called &“witty and searingly candid&” (Publishers Weekly), &“wrenchingly eloquent&” (Newsday), and &“a moving chronicle&” (The Nation). His writings have explored the shocking attempts by the medical establishment to &“cure&” homosexuality; Stonewall, before and after; the age of AIDS; the struggle for civil rights; the fight for economic and racial justice; and Duberman&’s vision for reclaiming a radical queer past from the creeping centrism of the gay movement. The Martin Duberman Reader assembles the core of Duberman&’s most important writings, offering a wonderfully comprehensive overview of our lives and times—and giving us a crucial touchstone for a new generation of activists, scholars, and readers. &“A deeply moral and reflective man who has engaged the greatest struggles of our times with an unflinching nerve, a wise heart, and a brilliant intellect.&” —Jonathan KozolIndigenous Peoples and Constitutional Reform in Australia: Beyond Mere Recognition
Par Bede Harris. 2024
This book examines whether Australia’s constitution should be reformed so as to enable the country to fulfil its obligations under…
the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which it ratified in 2009. The book surveys the history of the constitutional status of Australia’s Indigenous peoples from the time of colonisation through to the current debate on ‘Indigenous constitutional recognition’. However, it argues that the term ‘Indigenous constitutional recognition', implying that mere acknowledgement of the existence of Indigenous peoples is sufficient to meet their legitimate expectations, misrepresents the nature of the project the country needs to engage in. The book argues that Australia should instead embark upon a reform programme directed towards substantive, and not merely symbolic, constitutional change. It argues that only by the inclusion in the constitution of enforceable constitutional rights can the power imbalance between Indigenous Australians and the rest of society be addressed. Taking a comparative approach and drawing upon the experience of other jurisdictions, the book proposes a comprehensive constitutional reform programme, and includes the text of constitutional amendments designed to achieve the realisation of the rights of Australia’s Indigenous peoples. It ends with a call to improve the standard of civics education so as to overcome voter apprehension towards constitutional change.A Cultural History of Late Meiji Japan: Empire and Decadence
Par Alistair Swale. 2023
Scholarship on Japan’s development from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century has, perhaps quite understandably, been dominated by…
attention given to Japan’s emergence as a world power through a succession of military conflicts, and the burgeoning of a modern literary canon. This book argues that the emergence of empire and high culture needs to be more thoroughly integrated with an awareness of popular culture in urban life, a culture that at times exhibited a less than whole-hearted enthusiasm for the trappings of 'civilization', - a culture that was, in a sense, ‘decadent’. It integrates coverage of popular culture across diverse media and platforms, accentuating the emergence of new modern forms that evolved from the inter-relation between textual, visual and performative traditions such as kōdan and gidayū. The commentary is seasoned with reference to contemporary narratives, aiming to capture more ‘on the street’ perceptions of momentous events such as war and natural disasters, as well as the more arcane or curious media sensations of the moment. These included exposés of scandalous conduct in high places, new fads in popular entertainments and riveting stories of human interest whether it be crime or tragedies of modern urban living.William Dawes: Scientist, Governor, Abolitionist: Caught Between Science and Religion (Springer Biographies)
Par Richard De Grijs, Andrew Jacob. 2023
This book describes William Dawes’ life and professional achievements. William Dawes was a British Marine serving as the official astronomer…
on board the First Fleet making the 1787–1788 voyage from Britain to the new colony of New South Wales. Between 1788 and 1791, Dawes established not one but two observatories within a kilometre of Sydney’s present-day city centre, a full seven decades before the construction of Sydney’s historical Observatory at Dawes’ Point, today a stone’s throw from the Sydney Harbour Bridge. In this comprehensive biography, the authors discuss William Dawes’ life and his considerable impact—as astronomer, engineer, surveyor, ordnance officer and intellectual centre point—on the early colony in New South Wales (in essence, his impact on the earliest history of Sydney as a settlement) and, subsequently, on the British colonies of Sierra Leone on the West African coast and Antigua in the West Indies. Dawes’ life and professional achievements are closely linked to the earliest history of Sydney as a British settlement. He is often considered a man of high morals, and as such his interactions with the local populations in New South Wales, Sierra Leone and Antigua were mostly deemed respectful and above reproach. He is seen a truly enlightened individual, far ahead of his time. The authors of this book have a significant track record of successful and engaging communication of complex concepts in physics and astronomy with experts and non-experts alike. This biography touches on numerous aspects related to 18th century maritime navigation (“sailing on the stars”), societal relationships, the exploration of newly discovered lands, as well as the early history of Sydney and New South Wales, and the colonial histories of Sierra Leone and the West Indies. As such, this book will appeal to a wide range of readers, from scholars in the history of science and maritime navigation, to history enthusiasts ranging from local historians on Australia’s eastern seaboard to members of the public with a keen interest in British colonial history.This book argues first, that the forces of industrialization that transformed ship technology simultaneously transformed the working-class lives of merchant…
seamen, intensifying class conflict and producing collective networks of subversion and resistance within the urban borderland spaces of sailortowns in which sailors fought to maintain control over their mobility, agency, and rights. Second, that given their social, cultural, economic, geographic, and legal marginalization, merchant seamen have occupied essential roles at the parameters of US urban, legal, labor, immigration, and wartime history. Third, that the constellation of these histories, embedded in the encounters and negotiations that merchant seamen provoked along the nation’s coastlines and sailortowns, collectively represents a unique and essential perspective on the history of US citizenship.Old Ways New Roads: Travels in Scotland, 1720–1832
Par John Bonehill, Anne Dulau Beveridge and Nigel Leask. 2021
In 1725 an extensive military road and bridge-building programme was implemented by the British crown that would transform 18th-century Scotland.…
Aimed at pacifying some of her more inaccessible regions and containing the Jacobite threat, General Wade’s new roads were designed to replace ‘the old ways’ and ‘tedious passages’ through the mountains. Over the next few decades, the laying out of these routes opened up the country to visitors from all backgrounds. After the 1760s, soldiers, surveyors and commercial travellers were joined by leisure tourists and artists, eager to explore Scotland’s antiquities, natural history and scenic landscapes, and to describe their findings in words and images. In this book a number of acclaimed experts explore how the Scottish landscape was variously documented, evaluated, planned and imagined in words and images. As well as a fascinating insight into the experience of travellers and tourists, it also considers how they impacted on the experience of the Scottish people themselves.Exit Berlin: How One Woman Saved Her Family from Nazi Germany
Par Charlotte R. Bonelli. 2014
Centered around one family&’s preserved personal letters, this is &“an intimate, engaging examination of the plight of German Jewish refugees&”…
(Kirkus Reviews). Just a week after the Kristallnacht terror in 1938, young Luzie Hatch, a German Jew, fled Berlin to resettle in New York. Her rescuer was an American-born cousin and industrialist, Arnold Hatch. Arnold spoke no German, so Luzie quickly became translator, intermediary, and advocate for family left behind. Soon an unending stream of desperate requests from German relatives made their way to Arnold&’s desk. Luzie Hatch faithfully preserved her letters both to and from far-flung relatives during the World War II era as well as copies of letters written on their behalf. This extraordinary collection, now housed at the American Jewish Committee Archives, serves as the framework for Exit Berlin. Charlotte R. Bonelli offers a vantage point rich with historical context, from biographical information about the correspondents to background on U.S. immigration laws, conditions at the Vichy internment camps, refuge in Shanghai, and many other topics, thus transforming the letters into a riveting narrative. Arnold&’s letters also reveal an unfamiliar side of Holocaust history. His are the responses of an &“average&” American Jew, struggling to keep his own business afloat while also assisting dozens of relatives trapped abroad—most of whom he&’d never met and whose situation he could not fully comprehend. This book contributes importantly to historical understanding while also uncovering the dramatic story of one besieged family confronting unimaginable evil. &“Has as much to teach readers about today&’s world, which is filled with war and displacement, as it does about the world of the 1930s.&” —Kirkus Reviews &“For a generation steeped in email, this heartrending collection of letters takes us to a more intimately communicative era―in which Jews, trapped in the nightmare of Hitler&’s persecution, pleaded for help to escape to their cousins in America; and in which the latter tried desperately, generously, to respond.&” —Michael R. Marrus, author of The Holocaust in HistoryAnna Komnene and the Alexiad: The Byzantine Princess and the First Crusade
Par Ioulia Kolovou. 2020
&“Kolovou . . . rescues Anna from the talons of misogynist historians and places her where she belongs as an extraordinary, but…
very human, woman.&” —Beating Tsundoku A woman of extraordinary education and intellect, Anna Komnene was the only Byzantine female historian and one of the first and foremost historians in medieval Europe. Yet few people know of her and her extraordinary story. Subsequent historians and scholars have skewed the picture of Anna as an intellectual princess and powerful author. She has been largely viewed as an angry, bitter old woman, who greedily wanted a throne that did not belong to her. After being exiled to a convent, she composed the Alexiad, the history of the First Crusade and the Byzantine Emperor, Alexios I Komnenos (1081-1118), her father. This book aims to present Anna Komnene—the fascinating woman, pioneer intellectual, and charismatic author—to the general public. Drawing on the latest academic research to reconstruct Anna&’s life, personality and work, it moves away from the myth of Anna the conspirator and &“power-hungry woman&” which has been unfairly built around her over centuries of misrepresentation. It places Anna Komnene in the context of her own time: the ancient Greek colony and medieval Eastern Roman empire, known as Byzantium, with the magnificent city of Constantinople at its heart. At the forefront of an epic clash between East and West, this was a world renowned for its dazzling wealth, mystery and power games. This was a world with Anna Komnene directly at the center.&“Well-written, well-researched, and an overall fascinating read . . . A brilliant addition to women&’s history.&” —Where There&’s Ink There&’s PaperThe Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton Classics #2)
Par Albert O. Hirschman. 1977
In this volume, Albert Hirschman reconstructs the intellectual climate of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to illuminate the intricate ideological…
transformation that occurred, wherein the pursuit of material interests--so long condemned as the deadly sin of avarice--was assigned the role of containing the unruly and destructive passions of man. Hirschman here offers a new interpretation for the rise of capitalism, one that emphasizes the continuities between old and new, in contrast to the assumption of a sharp break that is a common feature of both Marxian and Weberian thinking. Among the insights presented here is the ironical finding that capitalism was originally supposed to accomplish exactly what was soon denounced as its worst feature: the repression of the passions in favor of the "harmless," if one-dimensional, interests of commercial life. To portray this lengthy ideological change as an endogenous process, Hirschman draws on the writings of a large number of thinkers, including Montesquieu, Sir James Steuart, and Adam Smith. Featuring a new afterword by Jeremy Adelman and a foreword by Amartya Sen, this Princeton Classics edition of The Passions and the Interests sheds light on the intricate ideological transformation from which capitalism emerged triumphant, and reaffirms Hirschman's stature as one of our most influential and provocative thinkers.Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.A revelatory new history that reexamines the brutal reality of the Holocaust–and reinterprets the events as a living trauma from…
which modern society has not yet recoveredOne of the UK's most acclaimed books of the year: "Outstanding" (Times Literary Supplement); "Remarkable" (Guardian); "Important and challenging" (Jewish Chronicle); "Deeply haunting" (Telegraph)The Holocaust is much discussed, much memorialized, and much portrayed. But there are major aspects of its history that have been overlooked.Spanning the entirety of the Holocaust, this sweeping history deepens our understanding. Dan Stone—Director of the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London—reveals how the idea of “industrial murder” is incomplete: many were killed where they lived in the most brutal of ways. He outlines the depth of collaboration across Europe, arguing persuasively that we need to stop thinking of the Holocaust as an exclusively German project. He also considers the nature of trauma the Holocaust engendered, and why Jewish suffering has yet to be fully reckoned with. And he makes clear that the kernel to understanding Nazi thinking and action is genocidal ideology, providing a deep analysis of its origins.Drawing on decades of research, The Holocaust: An Unfinished History upends much of what we think we know about the Holocaust. Stone draws on Nazi documents, but also on diaries, post-war testimonies, and even fiction, urging that, in our age of increasing nationalism and xenophobia, it is vital that we understand the true history of the Holocaust.Lovers in Auschwitz: A True Story
Par Keren Blankfeld. 2024
The &“mesmerizing and inspirational&” (Judy Batalion) true story of two Holocaust survivors who fell in love in Auschwitz, only to…
be separated upon liberation and lead remarkable lives apart following the war—and then find each other again more than 70 years later. Zippi Spitzer and David Wisnia were captivated by each other from the moment they first exchanged glances across the work floor. It was the beginning of a love story that could have happened anywhere. Except for one difference: this romance was unfolding in history&’s most notorious death camp, between two young prisoners whose budding intimacy risked dooming them if they were caught. Incredibly, David and Zippi survived for years beneath the ash-choked skies of Auschwitz. Under the protection of their fellow inmates, their romance grew and deepened, even as their brushes with death mounted and David&’s luck in particular seemed close to running out. As the war&’s end finally approached and the time came for them to leave the camp, David and Zippi made plans to meet again. But neither of them could imagine how long their reunion would take or how many lives they would live in the interim. They had no inkling, either, of the betrayals that would await them along the way. But David did suspect that Zippi harbored a secret—one that could explain the mystery of his survival all those years ago. An unbelievable tale of romance, sacrifice, loss, and resilience, Lovers in Auschwitz is a saga of two young people who found themselves trapped inside a waking nightmare of the Nazis&’ creation, yet who nevertheless discovered a love that sustained them through history&’s darkest hour.The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles During the Holocaust
Par Elizabeth B. White, Joanna Sliwa. 2024
The astonishing story of Dr. Josephine Janina Mehlberg—a Jewish mathematician who saved thousands of lives in Nazi-occupied Poland by masquerading…
as a Polish aristocrat—drawing on Mehlberg&’s own unpublished memoir.World War II and the Holocaust have given rise to many stories of resistance and rescue, but The Counterfeit Countess is unique. It tells the remarkable, unknown story of &“Countess Janina Suchodolska,&” a Jewish woman who rescued more than 10,000 Poles imprisoned by Poland&’s Nazi occupiers. Mehlberg operated in Lublin, Poland, headquarters of Aktion Reinhard, the SS operation that murdered 1.7 million Jews in occupied Poland. Using the identity papers of a Polish aristocrat, she worked as a welfare official while also serving in the Polish resistance. With guile, cajolery, and steely persistence, the &“Countess&” persuaded SS officials to release thousands of Poles from the Majdanek concentration camp. She won permission to deliver food and medicine—even decorated Christmas trees—for thousands more of the camp&’s prisoners. At the same time, she personally smuggled supplies and messages to resistance fighters imprisoned at Majdanek, where 63,000 Jews were murdered in gas chambers and shooting pits. Incredibly, she eluded detection, and ultimately survived the war and emigrated to the US. Drawing on the manuscript of Mehlberg&’s own unpublished memoir, supplemented with prodigious research, Elizabeth White and Joanna Sliwa, professional historians and Holocaust experts, have uncovered the full story of this remarkable woman. They interweave Mehlberg&’s sometimes harrowing personal testimony with broader historical narrative. Like The Light of Days, Schindler&’s List, and Irena&’s Children, The Counterfeit Countess is an unforgettable account of inspiring courage in the face of unspeakable cruelty.The Metamorphosis of the Amazon: An Environmental History Of Oil Extraction In Ecuador
Par Maximilian Fritz Feichtner. 2023
**Longlisted for the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize in Nonfiction (2023)** **An Amazon EDITOR'S PICK for BEST BOOKS OF 2023…
SO FAR in BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR and HISTORY** **An Amazon EDITOR'S PICK for BEST BOOKS OF THE MONTH (March 2023)** **A Bookshop.Org EDITOR'S PICK (March 2023)** &“This is the story of one of the boldest women in American history: self-made millionaire, a celebrity in her era, a woman beloved by her patients and despised by the men who wanted to control them.&” An industrious immigrant who built her business from the ground up, Madame Restell was a self-taught surgeon on the cutting edge of healthcare in pre-Gilded Age New York, and her bustling &“boarding house&” provided birth control, abortions, and medical assistance to thousands of women—rich and poor alike. As her practice expanded, her notoriety swelled, and Restell established her-self as a prime target for tabloids, threats, and lawsuits galore. But far from fading into the background, she defiantly flaunted her wealth, parading across the city in designer clothes, expensive jewelry, and bejeweled carriages, rubbing her success in the faces of the many politicians, publishers, fellow physicians, and religious figures determined to bring her down. Unfortunately for Madame Restell, her rise to the top of her field coincided with &“the greatest scam you&’ve never heard about&”—the campaign to curtail women&’s power by restricting their access to both healthcare and careers of their own. Powerful, secular men—threatened by women&’s burgeoning independence—were eager to declare abortion sinful, a position endorsed by newly-minted male MDs who longed to edge out their feminine competition and turn medicine into a standardized, male-only practice. By unraveling the misogynistic and misleading lies that put women&’s lives in jeopardy, Wright simultaneously restores Restell to her rightful place in history and obliterates the faulty reasoning underlying the very foundation of what has since been dubbed the &“pro-life&” movement. Thought-provoking, character-driven, boldly written, and feminist as hell, Madame Restell is required reading for anyone and everyone who believes that when it comes to women&’s rights, women&’s bodies, and women&’s history, women should have the last word.Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World
Par Malcolm Harris. 2023
Named One of the Year's Best Books by VULTURE • THE NEW REPUBLIC • DAZED • WIRED • BLOOMBERG •…
ESQUIRE • SALON • THE NEXT BIG IDEA CLUBThe history of Silicon Valley, from railroads to microchips, is an &“extraordinary&” story of disruption and destruction, told for the first time in this comprehensive, jaw-dropping narrative (Greg Grandin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The End of the Myth). Palo Alto&’s weather is temperate, its people are educated and enterprising, its corporations are spiritually and materially ambitious and demonstrably world-changing. Palo Alto is also a haunted toxic waste dump built on stolen Indian burial grounds, and an integral part of the capitalist world system. In PALO ALTO, the first comprehensive, global history of Silicon Valley, Malcolm Harris examines how and why Northern California evolved in the particular, consequential way it did, tracing the ideologies, technologies, and policies that have been engineered there over the course of 150 years of Anglo settler colonialism, from IQ tests to the "tragedy of the commons," racial genetics, and "broken windows" theory. The Internet and computers, too. It's a story about how a small American suburb became a powerful engine for economic growth and war, and how it came to lead the world into a surprisingly disastrous 21st century. PALO ALTO is an urgent and visionary history of the way we live now, one that ends with a clear-eyed, radical proposition for how we might begin to change course.We May Dominate the World: Ambition, Anxiety, and the Rise of the American Colossus
Par Sean A Mirski. 2023
Kirkus 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of 2023What did it take for the United States to become a global superpower? The…
answer lies in a missing chapter of American foreign policy with stark lessons for today The cutthroat world of international politics has always been dominated by great powers. Yet no great power in the modern era has ever managed to achieve the kind of invulnerability that comes from being completely supreme in its own neighborhood. No great power, that is, except one—the United States. In We May Dominate the World, Sean A. Mirski tells the riveting story of how the United States became a regional hegemon in the century following the Civil War. By turns reluctant and ruthless, Americans squeezed their European rivals out of the hemisphere while landing forces on their neighbors&’ soil with dizzying frequency. Mirski reveals the surprising reasons behind this muscular foreign policy in a narrative full of twists, colorful characters, and original accounts of the palace coups and bloody interventions that turned the fledgling republic into a global superpower. Today, as China makes its own run at regional hegemony and nations like Russia and Iran grow more menacing, Mirski&’s fresh look at the rise of the American colossus offers indispensable lessons for how to meet the challenges of our own century.