An examination of the threats to patriotism, masculinity, privacy, and honest behavior in American society and the classroom. The American Affair with Openness is one student’s frustrations with the intrusions of Left liberalism and political correctness on campus, in textbooks, legislation and social discourse everywhere. These essays (un)cover the negative gains of the feminist movement, investigate the impact of the media upon social standards, and address the complexities of defining oneself as a member of a minority as well as question the consequences if everyone assumed such a mentality. Brimming with classical liberalism and natural law, this book reflects research into the works of Frederic Bastiat, Ayn Rand, George Orwell, and more contemporary writers like Christina Hoff Sommers, Robert Bly, Allan Bloom (The Closing of the American Mind). Big focus is centered on the purported values of Openness with its “ cultural relativism, and political correctness.” questioning the procedures and ethics of making legislation and, to a large extent, personal choices based upon the politics of Openness.

The explicit purpose of this book is to analyze dying and death in the cosmopolitan, modern setting. There is, however, an additional theme that is implicit in the analysis and observations. The portrait of dying, which is provided in the pages of the book, also tells us a great deal about life. It demonstrates that the foundation for the medicalization of death that piercingly shapes the life experience of dying persons and loved ones is a product of the ways of life in the broader culture.

In 1956 a secret tunnel under communist East Berlin was discovered, which the CIA had used to tap into telephone communications. This was the first major exposure of a "spy incident" involving US efforts to keep its eye on the rest of the world. This book describes the response of the press and public to spy incidents in this era, including the U-2 spy plane, and spy ships USS Liberty and Pueblo.

In 1989 and 1990 the map of Europe was redrawn without a war, unlike other great ruptures of the international order such as 1815, 1870, 1918, and 1945. How did this happen? This major multinational study, based on archives from both sides of the 'Iron Curtain', highlights the contribution of international statecraft to the peaceful dissolution of Europe's bipolar order by examining pivotal summit meetings from 1970 to 1990. These are organized into three periods: 'Thawing', 'Living with', and 'Transcending' the Cold War. The volume offers fascinating insights into key statesmen such as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Gorbachev, Willy Brandt and Helmut Kohl, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping. It explores the central issues of the superpowers and arms control, their triangular relationship with China, and the seemingly intractable German question. Particular attention is devoted to the cultural dimensions of summitry, as performative acts for the media and as encounters with 'the Other' across ideological divides. All these threads are drawn together in a sweeping analytical conclusion. Written in lively prose, Transcending the Cold War is essential reading for anyone interested not just in modern history but also current international affairs.

First edition published in 2003.

Arguing that American colonists who declared their independence in 1776 remained tied to England by both habit and inclination, Jennifer Clark traces the new Americans' struggle to come to terms with their loss of identity as British, and particularly English, citizens. Americans' attempts to negotiate the new Anglo-American relationship are revealed in letters, newspaper accounts, travel reports, essays, song lyrics, short stories and novels, which Clark suggests show them repositioning themselves in a transatlantic context newly defined by political revolution. Chapters examine political writing as a means for Americans to explore the Anglo-American relationship, the appropriation of John Bull by American writers, the challenge the War of 1812 posed to the reconstructed Anglo-American relationship, the Paper War between American and English authors that began around the time of the War of 1812, accounts by Americans lured to England as a place of poetry, story and history, and the work of American writers who dissected the Anglo-American relationship in their fiction. Carefully contextualised historically, Clark's persuasive study shows that any attempt to examine what it meant to be American in the New Nation, and immediately beyond, must be situated within the context of the Anglo-American relationship.

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