'The American Empire' by Amaury de Riencourt is a bold and carefully documented analysis of the rise of America's global power. After the First and Second World Wars which stripped the European empires of their overseas possessions, the United States of America became the heir to "the global throne". From this point on, de Riencourt embarks on a detailed study of the United States's relentless expansion and dominance, becoming in the process a technological, industrial and military superpower spreading across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Simultaneously the author introduces the Soviet Union's equally ambitious imperialist tendencies and the threat posed by Communist China.
Reviews:
"Illuminated by brilliant and creative scholarship. . . . Everywhere the author shows a penetrating power and familiarity with sources."
—The New Yorker Magazine
"Envisions an Americanization of the world comparable to what Rome achieved when the Mediterranean bordered the unknown universe"
—TIME Magazine
". . . an exciting intellectual tour de force reminiscent of the works of de Tocqueville or Spengler"
- Saturday Review
"...sparkles and crackles with brilliant pronouncements and apt phrases.... One cannot conceive of a better source hook for an advanced course in international relations."
— William Henrv Chamberlin,
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
"...his prose is in the Malraux manner...and full of elegant pugnacity."
-THE NEW YORK TIMES
"Ideas flash out like sparklers . . . individually fascinating and cumulatively hypnotic.'"
-CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR