Bøger af Robert W. Merry

Acclaimed historian Robert Merry resurrects the presidential reputation of William McKinley in a ';measured, insightful biography that seeks to set the record straighta deft character study of a president' (The New York Times Book Review) whose low place in the presidential rankings does not reflect the stamp he put on America's future role in the world.Republican President William McKinley transformed America during his two terms as president (1897 1901). Although he does not register large in either public memory or in historians' rankings, in this revealing account, Robert W. Merry offers ';a fresh twist on the old talea valuable education on where America has been and, possibly, where it is going' (The National Review). McKinley settled decades of monetary controversy by taking the country to a strict gold standard; in the Spanish-American war he kicked Spain out of the Caribbean and liberated Cuba from Spain; in the Pacific he acquired Hawaii and the Philippines; he developed the doctrine of ';fair trade'; forced the ';Open Door' to China; forged our ';special relationship' with Great Britain. He expanded executive power and managed public opinion through his quiet manipulation of the press. McKinley paved the way for the bold and flamboyant leadership of his famous successor, Teddy Roosevelt, who built on his accomplishments (and got credit for them). Merry writes movingly about McKinley's admirable personal life, from his simple Midwestern upbringing to his Civil War heroism to his brave comportment just moments before his death by assassination. ';As this splendid revisionist narrative makes plain.The presidency is no job for a political amateur. Character counts, sometimes even more than charisma' (The Wall Street Journal). Lively, definitive, and eye-opening, President McKinley resurrects this overlooked president and places him squarely on the list of one of the most important.

In Sands of Empire, veteran political journalist and award-winning author Robert W. Merry examines the misguided concepts that have fueled American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. The emergence in the George W. Bush administration of America as Crusader State, bent on remaking the world in its preferred image, is dangerous and self-defeating, he points out. Moreover, these grand-scale flights of interventionism, regime change, and the use of pre-emptive armed force are without precedent in American history. Merry offers a spirited description of a powerful political core whose ideas have replaced conservative reservations about utopian visions -- these neocons who "e;embrace a brave new world in which American exceptionalism holds sway,"e; imagining that others around the globe can be made to abandon their cultures in favor of our ideals. He traces the strains of Wilsonism that have now merged into an adventurous and hazardous foreign policy, particularly as described by William Kristol, Francis Fukuyama, Max Boot, and Paul Wolfowitz, among others. He examines the challenge of Samuel Huntington's supposition that the clash of civilizations defines present and future world conflict. And he rejects the notion of The New York Times's Thomas L. Friedman that America is not only the world's role model for globally integrated free-market capitalism, but that it has a responsibility to foster, support, and sustain globalization worldwide. From the first president Bush to Clinton to the second Bush presidency, the United States has compromised its global leadership, endangered its security, and failed to meet the standard of justified intervention, Merry suggests. The country must reset its global strategies to protect its interests and the West's, to maintain stability in strategic areas, and to fight radical threats, with arms if necessary. For anything less than these necessities, American blood should remain in American veins.