America's special relationship with Italy took form during the years 1945 to 1948. The postwar reconstruction period witnessed an intense struggle to determine the new Italy's political and economic orientation. By virtue of their physical presence, ambitions, and evident strategic interests in Italy, the Americans aspired to play an active part in the internal political contest and ideological debate. Professor Harper's book explores the American role in Italy from the end of the war until the decisive elections of 1948, setting forth its objectives, contradictions, and fundamental...

American Visions of Europe sets three learned and elegantly written portraits against the background of the dramatic events and foreign policy controversies of the twentieth century. John Lamberton Harper's careful examination of three men and their policies--Roosevelt's partial internationalism, aiming at the retirement of Europe from world politics while avoiding American entanglement; Kennan's partial isolationism, aspiring to restore Europe's centrality and autonomy through temporary American engagement; and Acheson's accommodating interventionism, establishing the United States as a...

Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804) was an illegitimate West Indian emigrant who became the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. American Machiavelli focuses on Hamilton's controversial activities as foreign policy adviser and aspiring military leader. In the first major study of his foreign policy role in 30 years, John Lamberton Harper describes a decade of bitter division over the role of the Federal government in the economy during the 1790s and draws parallels between Hamilton and the sixteenth century Italian political adviser, Niccolò Machiavelli. Harper provides an original and...

Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804) was an illegitimate West Indian emigrant who became the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. American Machiavelli focuses on Hamilton's controversial activities as foreign policy adviser and aspiring military leader. In the first major study of his foreign policy role in 30 years, John Lamberton Harper describes a decade of bitter division over the role of the Federal government in the economy during the 1790s and draws parallels between Hamilton and the sixteenth century Italian political adviser, Niccolo Machiavelli. Harper provides an original and highly...

The East-West struggle for supremacy from 1945 to 1989 shaped the lives of hundreds of millions and brought the world to the brink of disaster on several occasions. More than two decades on, the debate over its causes and dynamics is far from over. Drawing on the latest archival evidence and scholarly research, prize-winning historian John Lamberton Harper provides a concise, briskly-written assessment of the Cold War.
Why did it start, and eventually envelope nearly every corner of the planet? Why did it stay "cold," at least in its original, European theatre? Why did it end, and who...