Status
Available
Pages
513
Collection
Publication
New York : W.W. Norton, 1988.
Description
William Appleman Williams was one of America's greatest critics of US imperialism. The Contours of American History, first published in 1961, reached back to seventeenth-century British history to argue that the relationship between liberalism and empire was in effect a grand compromise, with expansion abroad containing class and race tensions at home. Coming as it did before the political explosions of the 1960s, Williams's message was a deeply heretical one, and yet the Modern Library ultimately chose Contours as one of the best 100 nonfiction books of the 20th Century.
User reviews
LibraryThing member jwhenderson
If you want history from an anti-individualist slant this is the book for you. While criticizing Locke and Smith for their "laissez-faire" outlook he praises the limits they place on the economy. He is basically a mercantilist at heart and this comes through most clearly when he praises Keynes and
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the "Progressive Movement" for their adherence to the mercantilist tradition.(p446) He concludes his history (ending as the sixties began) with praise for the "socialist reassertion of the . . . ancient ideal of a Christian Commonwealth (as) a viable utopia".(p487) With that and a dollop of praise for Eugene V. Debs he, mercifully, closes the book on his progressive take on American history. Show Less
Subjects
Language
Physical description
513 p.; 19 cm
ISBN
0393305619 / 9780393305616