American Diplomacy, a History

Résumé du livre

"This new book is shorter than most texts in the history of American foreign policy. It aims to be long enough to give sufficient narrative continuity to shorter courses, concise enough to free the lecturer to develop special themes and topics for the longer course, and to allow the student to acquaint himself with some of the excellent mono- graphic and biographical literature dealing with American foreign relations. It also seeks to offer analysis as well as narrative, in the hope that the author's opinions, freely ventured, will stir the student to think for himself about the purposes, achievements, and shortcomings of American policy- encourage him to learn more than the details of foreign relations. Lastly, this book emphasizes the diplomacy of the twentieth century. One cannot, of course, understand American foreign policy without considering its historic beginnings at the end of the eighteenth century and its development through- out the nineteenth century, but this prelude to our own crucial twentieth century needs now to have its emphasis reduced. Therefore, to put twentieth- century events in their historical perspective has required a certain condensation of the traditional narrative of American diplomatic history prior to the 1890's. American Diplomacy is a lucid, concise history of American foreign relations that stresses the years since 1898 but without omitting any important development in our diplomacy before that period. Fifteen newly-drawn maps greatly enhance the student's under- standing of the text. Robert H. Ferrell did his under- graduate work at Bowling Green State University and his graduate work at Yale University. He was formerly on the faculty at Michigan State University and is at present a member of the Department of History at Indiana University. He is the author of two well-known studies in recent American foreign policy, Peace in Their Time, and American Diplomacy in the Great Depression."--Publisher.