The Americas in the Modern Age

Download or read book The Americas in the Modern Age written by Lester D. Langley and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this wide-ranging book, historian Lester D. Langley offers a fresh interpretation of the history of the modern Western hemisphere since the mid-nineteenth century. He evaluates the dynamics of hemispheric history, commencing with the articulation of the ?two Americas” (Theodore Roosevelt's America and the contrasting America described by Cuban revolutionary, essayist, and poet José Martí) and culminating with recent controversial efforts to forge a united hemisphere. Tracing the interactions and influences among the nations of South, Central, and North America, including Canada, Langley departs from other accounts of the past 150 years. He argues that the seedtime for today's Americas was not the Cold War but the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He also contends that it is not what the countries and people of the Americas have in common that binds them; instead, their cultural, political, and economic conflicts tie them together. Comprehensive and balanced, this history of the nations of the Americas offers new insights into both the past and the future of inter-American relations.