This alternative view of American history emphasizes class divisions, internal conflict and offers a sober counter to the more triumphantperspective of the American past. An alternative historical view of US historydirectly challenges and even undermines some of the fundamental assumptions ofthe mainstream view. Alexis de Tocqueville, the French statesman and author whotoured the United States [...]
People come to the US for freedom—freedom from political and economic tyranny. When Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas in 1492, North America was, relatively speaking, sparsely inhabited by natives who lived as hunter gatherers or (with few exceptions) primitive planters (Bowden 2003). Columbus’s discovery was followed by a long stream of immigrants, initially from Europe [...]
Events since the September 11, 2001, have produced an increase in anti-Americanization sentiments around the world. Americanization is the process by which the influence of the United States pervades and is experienced, desired, and resisted in other parts of the world. Americanization takes place as a result of overt acts of US foreign policy, as [...]
An aversion to America often coexists, within a nation or an individual, with an embracing of America. Anti-Americanism is not a comprehensive or coherent belief system or ideology, but rather a series of beliefs and prejudices regarding the United States that have haphazardly been labeled anti-Americanism. The term was first associated with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century [...]
This look at the origins of anti-Semitism examines why and how this religious hatred has been allowed to persist to this day in the United States. The term anti-Semitism (hatred of Jews) was coined by a German, Wilhelm Friedrich Marr, in 1873. The term was, Marr felt, a legitimate definition of the cultural conflict being [...]
The especially friendly relationship between the United States and Russia that arose after the September 11 attacks has reverted back to one reminiscent of the twentieth century, marked by criticism, mistrust, and competition. A special relationship between the United States and Russia existed during the period 2001–2002, after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on [...]
Though their history is rife with revolution, suspicion, and acrimony, the United States and Britain share a special relationship based on common political values including the rule of law, democracy, and civil rights. The notion of a special relationship existing between the United States and the United Kingdom has been a common reference point for [...]
Although cultural critics in the 1960s touted the technological capacity of television to transcend time and space and to create a global village, the television industry remained highly localized in its content and nationalized in its ownership and regulation until the 1990s. National governments viewed television as an important public servant responsible not only for [...]
American sports culture differs in many ways from the international sports scene with greater focus on commercialization, individual rather than team potential, and rivalries between regions or cities, rather than other nations. In the late 1990s a US television executive claimed that football was too complicated for women and children to understand; he may also [...]
Radical and populist movements in the United States have had a mixed reception, sometimes using violence to attain ends such as unionization, other times using the political process to effect change as with the New Deal. Whereas the concept of radicalism is generally applied to the advocacy of political or social reform and thus implies [...]