Cover of Dean Acheson and the creation of an American world order
Read Time: ~4.5 hr

Dean Acheson and the creation of an American world order

by Robert J. McMahon (2009)

About this book

"This compact and accessible biography critically assesses the life and career of Dean Acheson, one of America's foremost diplomats and strategists. As a top State Department official from 1941 to 1947 and as Harry S. Truman's secretary of state from 1949 to 1953, Acheson shaped many of the key U.S. foreign policy initiatives of those years, including the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the rebuilding of Germany and Japan, America's intervention in Korea, and its early involvement in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Right up until his death in 1971, Acheson continued to participate in major policy decisions and debates, including the Cuban missile and Berlin crises and the Vietnam War." "Dean Acheson can justifiably be called the principal architect of the American Century. More than any other individual, Acheson is responsible for designing and implementing the ultimately successful U.S. Cold War strategy for containing the Soviet Union. In an even broader sense, Acheson played an instrumental role in creating the institutions, alliances, and economic arrangements that, in the 1940s, brought to life an American-dominated world order. The remarkable durability of that world order - which has remained the dominant fact of international life long after the end of the Cold War - makes a careful examination of Acheson's diplomacy especially relevant to today's international challenges."--Jacket.

Setting / LocationGlobal
Story EraWWII Era
Protagonist / CoreDean Acheson and the creation of an American world order Lead Character

Readers who enjoyed this also loved

Cover of The Black Sheep

The Black Sheep

Bruce Gamble

The story of the people, places, and events that made the legend of the Marine Fighting Squadron (VMF) 214, of WWII fame, and of the squadron's pugnacious skipper, Greg "Pappy" Boyington.

Cover of Eyewitness to World War II

Eyewitness to World War II

[edited by] Neil Kagan, Stephen G. Hyslop

Personal writings and recollections of Roosevelt, Hitler, and Patton, as well as letters composed by soldiers at battle and diaries of women serving in the military at home, present an absorbing narrative that tells the entire history of the war from several perspectives.

Cover of Life and death on the Greenland patrol, 1942

Life and death on the Greenland patrol, 1942

Thaddeus D. Novak

"One of the untold stories of World War II is the guarding of Greenland and its coastal waters, where the first U.S. capture of an enemy ship took place. For six months in 1942 and against standing orders of the time, Thaddeus Nowakowski (now Novak) kept a personal diary of his service on patrol in the North Atlantic. Supplemented by photos from his last surviving shipmates, Novak's diary fills a void in the story of American sailors at war in the North Atlantic. It is the only known diary of an enlisted Coast Guard sailor to emerge from WWII." "Though the Greenland coast was of vital importance to Allied forces, U.S. Coast Guard crews serving there were relegated to converted fishing vessels known as "wooden shoes." Hastily commissioned in Boston to serve as escorts for supply routes to new air bases in Greenland, ten Arctic trawlers were transformed into the basis of the Greenland Patrol, transporting young men who had never been away from home into a realm of mountainous icebergs, lurking U-boats, and the alien culture of native Greenland Eskimos. This story of the Nanok's 1942 patrol is a remarkable account of a sailor thrown into a global war in a remote area full of environmental hardships that few endured in World War II. Between the sudden excitements and mind-numbing boredom of military life, Novak records the routine details of day-to-day patrol, contacts with the native Greenlanders and their impenetrable way of life, and actions such as the loss of the cutter Natsek and its entire crew on the night of December 17, 1942. Not an account of grand strategy or hand-to-hand combat, this story of a twenty-year-old petty officer on duty in the Arctic is rather the life of an ordinary individual at war, coping with rigorous hardships during a time of great crisis.". "Novak's account will be of significant value to students of the U.S. Coast Guard and of naval service in wartime. His illumination of the small details of a sailor's life and perceptive observation of the Arctic region and its little-known people will appeal to anyone interested in maritime history."--BOOK JACKET.

Cover of The emperor of lies

The emperor of lies

Steve Sem-Sandberg

Follows the World War II tale of Jewish ghetto director Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, who in an ambitious effort to render the ghetto an invaluable industrial complex makes compromises that have extraordinary consequences.

Dean Acheson and the creation of an American world order by Robert J. McMahon | Literally Just Books