Purchase
The Making of a Statesman and the Dawn of American Power
Crown
November 2013
On Sale: October 29, 2013
432 pages
ISBN: 0307887200
EAN: 9780307887207
Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction Biography
A captivating look at how Abraham Lincoln evolved into
one of our seminal foreign-policy presidents—and
helped point the way to America's rise to world power. This is the story of one of the most breathtaking feats in
the annals of American foreign policy—performed by one
of the most unlikely figures. Abraham Lincoln is not often
remembered as a great foreign-policy president. He had never
traveled overseas and spoke no foreign languages. And yet,
during the Civil War, Lincoln and his team skillfully
managed to stare down the Continent's great
powers—deftly avoiding European intervention on the
side of the Confederacy. In the process, the United States
emerged as a world power in its own right. Engaging, insightful, and highly original, Lincoln in the
World is a tale set at the intersection of personal
character and national power. The narrative focuses tightly
on five distinct, intensely human conflicts that helped
define Lincoln's approach to foreign affairs—from his
debate, as a young congressman, with his law partner over
the conduct of the Mexican War, to his deadlock with
Napoleon III over the French occupation of Mexico. Bursting
with colorful characters like Lincoln's bowie-knife-wielding
minister to Russia, Cassius Marcellus Clay; the cunning
French empress, Eugénie; and the hapless Mexican monarch
Maximilian—Lincoln in the World draws a finely
wrought portrait of a president and his team at the dawn of
American power. In the Age of Lincoln, we see shadows of our own world. The
international arena in the 1860s could be a merciless moral
vacuum. Lincoln's times demanded the cold, realistic pursuit
of national interest, and, in important ways, resembled our
own increasingly multipolar world. And yet, like ours,
Lincoln's era was also an information age, a period of rapid
globalization. Steamships, telegraph wires, and
proliferating new media were transforming the world. Global
influence required the use of "soft power" as well as hard. Anchored by meticulous research into overlooked archives,
Lincoln in the World reveals the sixteenth president
to be one of America's indispensable diplomats—and a
key architect of America's emergence as a global superpower.
Much has been written about how Lincoln saved the Union, but Lincoln in the World highlights the
lesser-known—yet equally vital—role he played on
the world stage during those tumultuous years of war and
division.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
| 
© 2003-2024 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy