Randall Bennett Woods's Books

The Roosevelt Foreign-Policy Establishment and the "Good Neighbor"

The United States and Argentina, 1941–1945

By: Randall Bennett Woods

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Roosevelt Foreign-Policy Establishment and the "Good Neighbor"

The United States and Argentina, 1941–1945

By: Randall Bennett Woods

The Good Neighbor Policy was tested to the breaking point by Argentina-U.S. relations during World War II. In part, its durability had depended both upon the willingness of all American republics to join with the United States in resisting attempts by extrahemispheric sources to intervene in New World affairs and upon continuity within the United States foreign-policy establishment. During World War II, neither prerequisite was satisfied, Argentina chose to pursue a neutralist course, and the Latin American policy of the United States became the subject of a bitter bureaucratic struggle within the Roosevelt administration. Consequently, the principles of nonintervention and noninterference, together with “absolute respect for the sovereignty of all states,” ceased to be the guideposts of Washington’s hemispheric policy. In this study, Randall Bennett Woods argues persuasively that Washington’s response to Argentine neutrality was based more on internal differences—individual rivalries and power struggles between competing bureaucratic empires—than on external issues or economic motives. He explains how bureaucratic infighting within the U.S. government, entirely irrelevant to the issues involved, shaped important national policy toward Argentina. Using agency memoranda, State Department records, notes on conversations and interviews, memoirs, and personal archives of the participants, Woods looks closely at the rivalries that swayed the course of Argentine-American relations. He describes the personal motives and goals of men such as Sumner Welles, Cordell Hull, Henry Morgenthau, Harry Dexter White, Henry A. Wallace, and Milo Perkins. He delineates various cliques within the State Department, including the contending groups of Welles Latin Americanists and Hull internationalists—and describes the power struggles between the State Department, the Treasury Department, the Board of Economic Welfare, the Caribbean Defense Command, and other agencies. Of special interest to students of contemporary history will be Woods’s discussion of the careers and views of Juan Peron and Nelson Rockefeller—for American policy contributed in no small way to Peron’s rise, and Rockefeller was the man chiefly responsible for the U.S. rapprochement with Argentina in 1944-45. Woods also gives special attention to the impact of the Wilsonian tradition—especially its contradictions—on policy formation. The last chapter, dealing with Argentina’s admission to the U.N., sheds some light on the origins of the Cold War. Wood’s investigation of the Argentine problem makes a significant contribution toward the understanding of U.S.-Latin American relations in the era of the Good Neighbor Policy, and provides new insights into the evolution of hemispheric policy as a whole during World War II. It reflects the growing emphasis on bureaucratic politics as a principal determinant of U.S. diplomacy.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

292

Publisher

University Press of Kansas

Published Date

ISBN 10

070063181X

ISBN 13

9780700631810

The Roosevelt Foreign-Policy Establishment and the "Good Neighbor"

The United States and Argentina, 1941–1945

By: Randall Bennett Woods

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Roosevelt Foreign-Policy Establishment and the "Good Neighbor"

The United States and Argentina, 1941–1945

By: Randall Bennett Woods

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

292

Publisher

University Press of Kansas

Published Date

ISBN 10

070063181X

ISBN 13

9780700631810

Quest for Identity

America since 1945

By: Randall Bennett Woods

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Quest for Identity

America since 1945

By: Randall Bennett Woods

Quest for Identity is a survey of the American experience from the close of World War II, through the Cold War and 9/11, to the present. It helps students understand postwar American history through a seamless narrative punctuated with accessible analyses. Randall Woods addresses and explains the major themes that punctuate the period: the Cold War, the Civil Rights and Women's Rights movements, and other great changes that led to major realignments of American life. While political history is emphasized, Woods also discusses in equal measure cultural matters and socio-economic problems. Dramatic new patterns of immigration and migration characterized the period as much as the counterculture, the growth of television and the Internet, the interstate highway system, rock and roll, and the exploration of space. The pageantry, drama, irony, poignancy and humor of the American journey since World War II are all here.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

618

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1139444263

ISBN 13

9781139444262

A Black Odyssey

John Lewis Waller and the Promise of American Life, 1878–1900

By: Randall Bennett Woods

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

A Black Odyssey

John Lewis Waller and the Promise of American Life, 1878–1900

By: Randall Bennett Woods

This book focuses on the career of a single individual—an ambitious, resourceful black American—and his efforts to realize personal fulfillment in a racist world. No black American was more determined to realize the promise of American life following the Civil War, nor more frustrated by his inability to do so than John Lewis Waller. Waller, whose first twelve years were spent in slavery, overcame his humble beginnings to become a politician, lawyer, journalist, and diplomat. Nevertheless, his life provides a case study of a middle class black caught between a desire to work within the existing political and economic framework and a need to reject a milieu that was becoming increasingly racist. Waller spent his childhood as a slave in Missouri, and his adolescence on a farm in Iowa. Circumstances and personal ambition combined to allow Waller to acquire a trade—barbering—and a profession—lawyering—in the 1870s. In 1878 he migrated to frontier Kansas, where he practiced law, edited a newspaper, rose to a position of leadership in the black community, and became an important figure in the state Republican party. His political career ended abruptly in 1890, however, when the Republicans rejected his bid to be nominated as the party’s candidate for state auditor. Convinced that his defeat was due to the rising tide of racism throughout the nation, he turned his attentions abroad. Waller was particularly susceptible to the lure of overseas empire because he had spent much of his adult life in the midst of a community of people who had succumbed to the myth of a “promised land,” who were convinced that the Negro would be best able to realize his potential in economically under-developed regions not yet exploited and controlled by the white man. In 1891 President Benjamin Harrison appointed Waller United States consul to the east African island of Madagascar. By 1894 Waller had obtained a huge land grant there for the founding of a black utopia. He hoped to establish a plantation-colony that would simultaneously advance his personal fortunes, serve as an investment opportunity for aspiring black capitalists, and constitute a refuge for oppressed Afro-Americans who wished to immigrate. He was thwarted once again by racism, however—this time in the guise of French imperialism. Viewing Waller and his plans as a threat to their hegemony in Madagascar, French authorities quashed the concession, arrested Waller on a charge of being a spy, and sentenced him to twenty years in prison. There followed a full-scale diplomatic confrontation between the United States and France. Waller was released after serving ten months in a French prison, but only after the Cleveland administration agreed to discredit him to the point where he would seem guilty as charged. In his early manhood John Lewis Waller had realized that because he was a Negro personal achievement could not be separated from racial advancement. Responding to that perception, he spent a lifetime searching for a frontier where blacks could enjoy the blessings of democracy and capitalism, and yet be free of the blight of racism. Unlike the vast majority of American blacks of his time, Waller was able to articulate his dreams, have an impact on the larger, white dominated environment, and realize his individual potential to a remarkable degree. Nevertheless, his dreams were ultimately dashed by racism. His sad but fascinating story deserves the careful attention of all students of politics and race relations during the complex post-Civil War year.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

272

Publisher

University Press of Kansas

Published Date

ISBN 10

0700631801

ISBN 13

9780700631803

A Changing of the Guard

Anglo-American Relations, 1941-1946

By: Randall Bennett Woods

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

A Changing of the Guard

Anglo-American Relations, 1941-1946

By: Randall Bennett Woods

Between 1941 and 1946, in response to the devastation caused by World War II, memories of the Great Depression, and the prospect of Soviet expansion, a group of politicians, diplomats, and economists in the United States and Great Britain sought to repair the ruined economies of of Europe and secure economic prosperity for America. Their program, which became known as multilateralism, called for reduced quotas on imports, lowered tariffs, the abandonment of currency exchange controls, and economic decision making by international bodies. Randall Woods explores this attempt to create an interdependent world economy and sets it against the broader political and strategic backdrop of the period. In the United States, multilateralism attracted New Deal liberals because it proposed to help not only the established economic interests but traditionally disadvantaged groups such as farmers and industrial workers as well. Moderate socialists in Britain also lent their support to a liberalized trading system, as did many conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic, believing that the program would preserve some degree of free enterprise in the international economy. Unfortunately for its disciples, Woods argues, multilateralism was so modified by the forces of isolationism and economic nationalism_and by bureaucratic politics in the United States_that it failed to achieve its economic and strategic goals. The international economy that emerged after World War II was not an equitable partnership and merely finalized the fifty-year process by which the United States supplanted Great Britain as the arbiter of Western Capitalism. In the end, modified multilateralism hampered rather than facilitated the free flow of goods and capital, and it did little to promote social democracy.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

496

Publisher

UNC Press Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807818771

ISBN 13

9780807818770

LBJ

Architect of American Ambition

By: Randall Bennett Woods

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

LBJ

Architect of American Ambition

By: Randall Bennett Woods

A dramatic reappraisal of one of the most significant and least understood presidents in American history, based on extraordinary interviews and documents - this is LBJ as he has never been seen before.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

1040

Publisher

Harvard University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0674026993

ISBN 13

9780674026995

A Black Odyssey

John Lewis Waller and the Promise of American Life, 1878–1900

By: Randall Bennett Woods

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

A Black Odyssey

John Lewis Waller and the Promise of American Life, 1878–1900

By: Randall Bennett Woods

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

272

Publisher

University Press of Kansas

Published Date

ISBN 10

0700631801

ISBN 13

9780700631803

J. William Fulbright, Vietnam, and the Search for a Cold War Foreign Policy

By: Randall Bennett Woods

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

J. William Fulbright, Vietnam, and the Search for a Cold War Foreign Policy

By: Randall Bennett Woods

An abridged biography of Fulbright, focusing on his career as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and critic of the Vietnam War.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

308

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0521588006

ISBN 13

9780521588003

Fulbright

A Biography

By: Randall Bennett Woods

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Fulbright

A Biography

By: Randall Bennett Woods

A full-scale biography, including the civil rights movement and the major international events of the Cold War.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

734

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0521482623

ISBN 13

9780521482622

A Changing of the Guard

Anglo-American Relations, 1941-1946

By: Randall Bennett Woods

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

A Changing of the Guard

Anglo-American Relations, 1941-1946

By: Randall Bennett Woods

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

496

Publisher

UNC Press Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807818771

ISBN 13

9780807818770

Securing the Prize

Presidential Metaphor and US Intervention in the Persian Gulf

By: Randall Fowler

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Securing the Prize

Presidential Metaphor and US Intervention in the Persian Gulf

By: Randall Fowler

How presidential metaphors have shaped US discourse on the Persian Gulf From the 1970s to the 1990s American presidents and their advisers introduced four metaphors into foreign-policy discourse that taught Americans to view the Persian Gulf as a vulnerable region and site of US responsibility on the world stage. In Securing the Prize: Presidential Metaphor and US Intervention in the Persian Gulf, Randall Fowler argues that, for half a century, metaphor has been central to defining America's role in the Middle East. Metaphors served as shorthand for presidents to promote their policies, filtering through the judgments of officials, journalists, experts, and critics to mediate American perceptions of the Gulf War. Tracing the use of security metaphors from President Richard Nixon to President George W. Bush, Fowler revises mainstream understandings regarding the origins of the War on Terror and explains the disconnect between skeptical public attitudes toward US involvement in the Gulf War and the heavy American military footprint in the region.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

181

Publisher

Univ of South Carolina Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1643365495

ISBN 13

9781643365497

Shadow Warrior

William Egan Colby and the CIA

By: Randall B. Woods

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Shadow Warrior

William Egan Colby and the CIA

By: Randall B. Woods

Explores the life and career of William Egan Colby, one of the most controversial figures of the postwar period: World War II commando, Cold War spy, Saigon CIA station chief, and eventual CIA director under Nixon and Ford, he played a critical role in some of the most pivotal events in 20th-century history.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

579

Published Date

ISBN 10

0465021948

ISBN 13

9780465021949

Dawning of the Cold War

The United States' Quest for Order

By: Randall Bennett Woods,Howard Jones

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Dawning of the Cold War

The United States' Quest for Order

By: Randall Bennett Woods,Howard Jones

The best comprehensive account in print, Dawning of the Cold War draws on a vast amount of cold war scholarship to examine the issues and forces that shaped the East-West confrontation in the years after World War II. The most satisfactory narrative history we now have of how the Cold War came about in Europe. --John Lewis Gaddis, American Historical Review

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

360

Published Date

ISBN 10

1566630479

ISBN 13

9781566630474

Fulbright

A Biography

By: Randall Bennett Woods

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Fulbright

A Biography

By: Randall Bennett Woods

A full-scale biography, including the civil rights movement and the major international events of the Cold War.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

734

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0521482623

ISBN 13

9780521482622

Prisoners of Hope

Lyndon B. Johnson, the Great Society, and the Limits of Liberalism

By: Randall Bennett Woods

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Prisoners of Hope

Lyndon B. Johnson, the Great Society, and the Limits of Liberalism

By: Randall Bennett Woods

President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society was breathtaking in its scope and dramatic in its impact. Over the course of his time in office, Johnson passed over one thousand pieces of legislation designed to address an extraordinary array of social issues. Poverty and racial injustice were foremost among them, but the Great Society included legislation on issues ranging from health care to immigration to education and environmental protection. But while the Great Society was undeniably ambitious, it was by no means perfect. In Prisoners of Hope, prize-winning historian Randall B. Woods presents the first comprehensive history of the Great Society, exploring both the breathtaking possibilities of visionary politics, as well as its limits. Soon after becoming president, Johnson achieved major legislative victories with the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But he wasn't prepared for the substantial backlash that ensued. Community Action Programs were painted as dangerously subversive, at worst a forum for minority criminals and at best a conduit through which the federal government and the inner city poor could bypass the existing power structure. Affirmative action was rife with controversy, and the War on Poverty was denounced by conservatives as the cause of civil disorder and disregard for the law. As opposition, first from white conservatives, but then also some liberals and African Americans, mounted, Johnson was forced to make a number of devastating concessions in order to secure the future of the Great Society. Even as many Americans benefited, millions were left disappointed, from suburban whites to the new anti-war left to African Americans. The Johnson administration's efforts to draw on aspects of the Great Society to build a viable society in South Vietnam ultimately failed, and as the war in Vietnam descended into quagmire, the president's credibility plummeted even further. A cautionary tale about the unintended consequences of even well-intentioned policy, Prisoners of Hope offers a nuanced portrait of America's most ambitious--and controversial--domestic policy agenda since the New Deal.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

461

Published Date

ISBN 10

0465098711

ISBN 13

9780465098712

Book's by Randall Bennett Woods

The Roosevelt Foreign-Policy Establishment and the "Good Neighbor"

The Roosevelt Foreign-Policy Establishment and the "Good Neighbor"

The Roosevelt Foreign-Policy Establishment and the "Good Neighbor"

The Roosevelt Foreign-Policy Establishment and the "Good Neighbor"

Quest for Identity

Quest for Identity

A Black Odyssey

A Black Odyssey

A Changing of the Guard

A Changing of the Guard

LBJ

LBJ

A Black Odyssey

A Black Odyssey

J. William Fulbright, Vietnam, and the Search for a Cold War Foreign Policy

J. William Fulbright, Vietnam, and the Search for a Cold War Foreign Policy

Fulbright

Fulbright

A Changing of the Guard

A Changing of the Guard

Securing the Prize

Securing the Prize

Shadow Warrior

Shadow Warrior

Dawning of the Cold War

Dawning of the Cold War

Fulbright

Fulbright

Prisoners of Hope

Prisoners of Hope

Username

Password

Username

Password

Password again

Birthday

Email