1. Springboards and strategies; 2. The second industrial revolution at home and abroad; 3. Race for empire; 4. 'America will take this continent in hand alone'; 5. Crossing the oceans; 6. 1893–6: chaos and crises; 7. The Empire of 1898 - and beyond; 8. Pacific empire - and upheaval; 9. Theodore Roosevelt: conservative as revolutionary; 10. William Howard Taft and the age of revolution; Conclusion: 11. The 1865–1913 era restated.
This second volume of the updated edition describes the dynamics of United States foreign policy from 1865 to 1913.
Walter LaFeber is Andrew Tisch and James Tisch Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at Cornell University. He is the author of America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945–2006, 10th edition (2007), The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1865–1898, 25th anniversary edition (1998), which received the Albert G. Beveridge Prize from the American Historical Association, The Clash: US–Japan Relations throughout History (1997), which received the Bancroft Prize in American History and the Ellis Hawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians, The American Age: US Foreign Policy Abroad and at Home since 1750, 2nd edition (1994), and Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America, 2nd edition (1992), which won the Gustavus Myers Prize.
'The American Search for Opportunity is vintage LaFeber:
provocatively conceived, forcefully argued, and beautifully
written. In this revised edition, LaFeber has retained and
strengthened his arresting thesis that U.S. policy makers, prompted
by a search for markets and flawed racial views, aggressively
pursued opportunity and informal empire abroad at the expense of
international order and stability.' Joseph A. Fry, University of
Nevada, Las Vegas
'This is a masterful account of the United States' rise to global
power by one of the most eminent scholars of U.S. foreign
relations. Drawing on the latest scholarship and original research,
Walter LaFeber eloquently demonstrates how U.S. economic expansion
wreaked havoc around the world. He also shows that the disorder
created by U.S. political and industrial leaders abroad gave rise
to an imperial presidency at home. This thought-provoking book is
essential reading for anyone interested in U.S. hegemony in a
globalizing world - and the effects of globalization on the United
States.' Michel Gobat, University of Iowa
'No one has done more to revolutionize our thinking about U.S.
foreign policy in the era following the Civil War than Walter
LaFeber. His path-breaking The New Empire demonstrated how those
years set the stage for America's twentieth-century career as a
world power. The American Search for Opportunity, 1865–1913 not
only takes that story beyond 1898, it highlights what a powerfully
destabilizing and unsettling experience for other lands American
expansion into the world has often been. Professor LaFeber
addresses compellingly an issue that students of the past, and
citizens of the present, would do well to give much greater
attention.' Robert E. Hannigan, Suffolk University
'The American Search for Opportunity, 1865–1913 is much more than a
survey of U.S. foreign policy from the Civil War to World War One.
It is an elegant interpretive essay. LaFeber argues boldly and
persuasively that the relentlessness of the U.S. search for global
economic opportunities jostled societies as disparate as Russia and
Haiti, inspiring revolution and turmoil around the world.' Nancy
Mitchell, North Carolina State University
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