From the award-winning, #1 bestselling author of A Short History of Progress comes another surprising, frightening and essential book.

The USA is now the world's lone superpower, whose deeds could make or break this century. For better and worse, America has Americanized the world. How did a marginal frontier society, in a mere two centuries, become the de facto ruler of the world? Why do America's great achievements in democracy, prosperity and civil rights now seem threatened by forces within itself?

Brimming with insight into history and human behaviour, and written in Wright's captivating style, What Is America? shows how this came to pass; how the United States, which regards itself as the most modern country on earth, is also deeply archaic, a stronghold not only of religious fundamentalism but of "modern" beliefs in limitless progress and a universal mission that have fallen under suspicion elsewhere in the west, a rethinking driven by two World Wars and the reckless looting of our planet.

A fresh, passionate look at the past and future of the world's most powerful nation, What Is America? will reframe the debate about our neighbour and ourselves.

Autorentext

Novelist and historian RONALD WRIGHT is the award-winning author of ten books published in 16 languages and more than 40 countries. A Short History of Progress, his CBC Massey Lectures, won the Libris Award for Non-Fiction Book of the Year and inspired Martin Scorsese's 2011 film Surviving Progress. Wright's first novel, A Scientific Romance, won Britain's David Higham Prize for Fiction and was chosen a book of the year by The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, and the Sunday Times. His acclaimed works Cut Stones and Crossroads, Time Among the Maya, and Stolen Continents are now available as Penguin Modern Classics. Online: www.ronaldwright.com

Inhalt

Author's Foreword

1. The New World Order
2. Loot, Labour and Land
3. Very Well Peopled and Towned
4. Religion and Profit Jump Together
5. White Savages
6. Manifest Destiny
7. A Sort of Empire
8. The Winds of Fear
9. The World's Best Hope

Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index