The Shock of America by Ellwood, David;

Europe and the Challenge of the Century

Series: Oxford History of Modern Europe;

GET 10% OFF
The discount is only available for 'Alert of Favourite Topics' newsletter recipients.

Publisher's listprice GBP 73.00
The price is estimated because at the time of ordering we do not know what conversion rates will apply to HUF / product currency when the book arrives. In case HUF is weaker, the price increases slightly, in case HUF is stronger, the price goes lower slightly.

34 875 Ft (33 215 Ft + 5% VAT)
Discount 10% (cc. 3 488 Ft off)
Discounted price 31 388 Ft (29 894 Ft + 5% VAT)

34 875 Ft

Availability

printed on demand

Product details:

Publisher OUP Oxford
Date of Publication 19 July 2012

ISBN 9780198228790
Binding Hardback
No. of pages600 pages
Size 219x144x36 mm
Weight 830 g
Language English
Illustrations 10 black and white images

Short description:

An ambitious, original book describing a century of Europe coping with America: its inventions, personalities, films, armies, business, and politics. These decades reveal how much emotional energy Europeans invested in finding their own ways to reconcile tradition and modernity under the pressure of the ever-evolving American challenge.

Long description:

The Shock of America is based on the proposition that whenever Europeans contemplated those margins of their experience where change occurred over the last 100 years or more, there, sooner or later, they would find America. How Europeans have come to terms over the decades with this dynamic force in their midst, and what these terms were, is the story at the heart of this text. Masses of Europeans have been enthralled by the real or imaginary prospects coming out of the USA. Important minorities were at times deeply upset by them. Sometime the roles were reversed or shaken up. But no-one could be indifferent for long. Inspiration, provocation, myth, menace, model: all these categories and many more have been deployed to try to cope with the Americans. Attitudes and stereotypes have emerged, intellectual resources have been mobilised, positions and policies developed: all trying to explain and deal with the kind of radiant supremacy the Americans built in the course of the twentieth century.

David Ellwood combines political, economic, and cultural themes, suggesting that American mass culture is a distinctively incisive form of American power over time. The book is structured in three parts; a separation based on the proposition that America's influence as a decisive force for or against innovation was present most conspicuously after Europe's three greatest military-political conflicts of the contemporary era: the Great War, World War II, and the Cold War. It concludes with the emotional upsurge in Europe which greeted the arrival of Obama on the world scene, suggesting that in spite of all the disappointments and frictions of the years, the US still retained its privileged place as a source of inspiration for the future across the Western world.

Ellwood's The Shock of America is a huge, ambitious and hugely enjoyable book, stuffed full of enough erudition and anecdote to last any undergraduate or graduate class for a whole term ... This is a book that will spark debate among historians and International Relations experts for years to come.

Introduction
Part I: 1898-1939
Prologue
How the American Century Started
The Roaring Twenties in Europe
Modernity and the European Encounter with Hollywood
The 1930s: Capitalism on Trial
New Deal America: The Flickering Beacon
Part II: 1941-1959
Our Destiny, Your Future
Responding to the World's Reformer
Progress Re-discovered? European Thinkers and America's Propositions in World War II
'The Most Revolutionary Force': When American Armies Arrive...
Reflating Europe with the Marshall Plan
The 1950s: Going for Growth
Part III: 1989-2009
After the Cold War: The Age of 'Soft Power'
Epilogue: The End of the 'American Century'?
Conclusions