How the world was won: the Americanization of everywhere

Description

From politics and war, to jeans and sneakers: a look at America's influence on the world from an international perspectiveOn the day after 9/11, foreign newspapers ran headlines announcing "We Are All Americans Now." Though the sentiment was not new, it was also not quite the same as when Henry Luce announced in 1941, the inauguration of what he called "the American Century," during which the US was to raise all men "from the level of the beasts to what the Psalmist calls a little lower than angels." When America suddenly emerged as a global power in the postwar period, the world—with pockets of resistance from France, Russia, and Japan in particular—was happy to be remade in the US image. America dazzled, and sometimes intimidated, older, staler, less innovative cultures. The affluence it placed on display was something to which most other countries aspired, and it was this fantasy that helped win the Cold War. Fast forward to today and the... 1. Looking to America * 2. A Coming of Age * 3. `The Meaning of America' 324 `Have We Any Friends?' * 5. Prosperity or Tragedy * 6. `Master of the Earth' * 7. American Girls in Italy and Elsewhere * 8. Free-Enterprise Art * 9. Americanophilia * 10. On the Roads * 11. `Americanize Yourselves!' * 12. Little America * 13. Astronauts and Assassins * 14. `I Want it to Come HERE!' * 15. Nether Americas * 16. B-Day and Other Invasions * 17. Dialogues with Consumer Products * 18. The Campaign to Free America * 19. `Why Do They Hate Us?' * 20. `Thanks, America' * Acknowledgments, Index