From Colony to Superpower : U. S. Foreign Relations Since 1776

by Herring, George C.

• ISBN13: 9780199765539
• ISBN10: 0199765537
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-04-27
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

A finalist for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, this prize-winning and critically acclaimed history uses foreign relations as the lens through which to tell the story of America's dramatic rise from thirteen disparate colonies huddled along the Atlantic coast to the world's greatest superpower. George C. Herring tells a story of stunning successes and sometimes tragic failures, captured in a fast-paced narrative that illuminates the central importance of foreign relations to the existence and survival of the nation, and highlights its ongoing impact on the lives of ordinary citizens. He shows how policymakers defined American interests broadly to include territorial expansion, access to growing markets, and the spread of an "American way" of life. And Herring does all this in a story rich in human drama and filled with epic events. Statesmen such as Benjamin Franklin and Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman and Dean Acheson played key roles in America's rise to world power. But America's expansion as a nation also owes much to the adventurers and explorers, the sea captains, merchants and captains of industry, the missionaries and diplomats, who discovered or charted new lands, developed new avenues of commerce, and established and defended the nation's interests in foreign lands. From Colony to Superpower captures all this as it tells the dramatic story of America's emergence as superpower--its birth in revolution, its troubled present, and its uncertain future. Winner of the Robert H. Ferrell Book Award of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations "Herring recaptures a quarter-millennium of American foreign policy with fluidity and felicity...we have long been waiting for a single-volume history like this one." -- New York Times Book Review " From Colony to Superpower could not be more timely, more colorful, or more compelling for Americans seeking to understand the causes and the consequences of the quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq." -- The Chronicle of Higher Education "This latest entry in the outstanding Oxford History of the United States is continually engrossing in its overview of American diplomacy... Herring's lucid prose and thought-provoking arguments give this large tome a pace that never flags." -- Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) "In this splendidly detailed account, George Herring expertly guides us through the rich and fascinating story of America's foreign relations. This is history on a grand scale, clearly and elegantly rendered. Anyone who wants to understand how the United States has come to occupy its current place on the world stage should read this magisterial book." --Fredrik Logevall, co-author of A People and a Nation

Author Biography

George C. Herring is Alumni Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Kentucky. A leading authority on U.S. foreign relations, he is the former editor of Diplomatic History and a past president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. He is the author of America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975, among other books.