Designed to encourage critical thinking about history, this reader uses a carefully selected group of primary sources and analytical essays to allow students to test the interpretations of distinguished historians and draw their own conclusions about the history of American foreign policy. This text serves as an effective educational tool for courses on U.S. foreign policy, recent U.S. history, or 20th Century U.S. history. Some of the new literature spotlights cultural relations, and the ways in which culturally constructed attitudes about class, gender, race, and national identity have shaped American's perceptions of the world and subsequently its overseas relationships.
Dennis Merrill Bücher



With Congress paralyzed, lawmaking falls to executive agencies and courts that interpret existing statutes. Due to the so-called Chevron doctrine, courts generally defer to agencies. Thomas Merrill examines the immense consequences of the doctrine and the intense backlash, offering a new way to conceptualize the authority of agencies and courts.
Designed to encourage critical thinking about history, this reader uses a carefully selected group of primary sources and analytical essays to allow students to test the interpretations of distinguished historians and draw their own conclusions about the history of American foreign policy. This text serves as an effective educational tool for courses on U.S. foreign policy, recent U.S. history, or 20th Century U.S. history.The Sixth Edition incorporates coverage of the post-Cold War era as well as new material that examines the role of gender, race, and national identity in American foreign policy.