Walter A. McDougall – författare

"Conservational and erudite."—Wall Street JournalA renowned Pulitzer Prize–winning historian recounts the dramatic tale of modern Europe’s ascent.In The Mighty Continent: A Candid History of Modern Europe, Walter McDougall, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, provides readers with a sweeping historical narrative that takes in the political, economic, social, intellectual, and cultural developments in the major European nations from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century.Along the way, McDougall provides new insights on and interpretations of the Renaissance, the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, the Age of Exploration, the Scientific, French, and Industrial Revolutions, the sources of modernism, the origins of World War I, the rise of totalitarianism, the advance of the European Union, the collapse of communism, and much else.Comprehensive yet compact, objective yet unabashed, attuned to European failings yet refreshingly free from cloying moralism, The Mighty Continent is history as it used to be: exciting, uplifting, ironic, not infrequently tragic—and, above all, fair to the figures who made modern Europe so world-shakingly powerful and inescapably influential.

A “provocative and richly detailed” history of 19th-century America from the age of Jackson to the abandonment of Reconstruction (Kirkus, starred review).From its shocking curtain-raiser—the conflagration that consumed Lower Manhattan in 1835—to the climactic centennial year of 1876, when Americans staged a corrupt, deadlocked presidential campaign (fought out in Florida), Walter A. McDougall’s Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era, 1829-1877 throws off sparks like a flywheel. This eagerly awaited sequel to Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History, 1585-1828 carries the saga of the American people’s continuous self-reinvention from the inauguration of President Andrew Jackson through the eras of Manifest Destiny, Civil War, and Reconstruction, America’s first failed crusade to put “freedom on the march” through regime change and nation building.But Throes of Democracy is much more than a political history. Here, for the first time, is the American epic as lived by Germans and Irish, Catholics and Jews, as well as people of British Protestant and African American stock; an epic defined as much by folks in Wisconsin, Kansas, and Texas as by those in Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia; an epic in which Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, showman P. T. Barnum, and circus clown Dan Rice figure as prominently as Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and Henry Ward Beecher; an epic in which railroad management and land speculation prove as gripping as Indian wars. Walter A. McDougall’s zesty, irreverent narrative says something new, shrewd, ironic, or funny about almost everything as it reveals our national penchant for pretense—a predilection that explains both the periodic throes of democracy and the perennial resilience of the United States.Praise for Throes of Democracy“History buffs will definitely gravitate to this thick book. . . . A provocative survey from a premier historian.” —Booklist (starred review)“A pleasing romp through a critical period in the nation’s history, it sticks to the tried and true.” —Publishers Weekly

“This unusual book . . . may have a major impact on how we Americans understand ourselves. . . . Fast paced and full of shrewd judgements.” —Gordon S. Wood, New York Times Book Review, front pageThis powerful reinterpretation of United States history is remarkable not only for its scholarship and historical breadth, but also in its assertion that the success of the country depends in a large part on the unique American character, which has shaped so many historic events.In the first of a projected three-volume series, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Walter A. McDougall argues that the creation of the United States is the central event in the last four hundred years of world history. Freedom Just Around the Corner masterfully chronicles the earliest years of this nation, revealing that the genius behind the success of the United States is not based on the works and ideas of one person, but rather on the complex, irrepressible American spirit.“So origina . . . that you can read any five pages of this book and feel you are encountering America through fresh eyes.” –Washington Post Book World“The chapter on the framing of the Constitution should be required reading . . . Walter McDougall is a historian with a masterful grasp of his subject.” —Claude Crowley, Fort Worth Star-Telegram “Briskly written, deeply researched, fact-filled and satisfyingly wide in its coverage.” —Publishers Weekly“An imaginative, evenhanded, and masterful history that shows the freedoms—and high costs—of our hustling nation. . . . [A]n important contribution not only to its field, but to all Americans.” —Bookmarks magazine“McDougall has produced the first volume of a trilogy that promises to be the finest history of America in print.” —Weekly Standard

Walter McDougall offers an original analysis of Versailles diplomacy from the standpoint of the power that had the most direct interest and took the first initiatives in the search for a solution to the German problem. The author's new view of the struggle for execution or revision of the Versailles treaty holds sober implications for assessment of the political origins of international anarchy during the 1930s and European integration in the 1950s. He shows that the Treaty of Versailles was unenforceable, and that the French postwar government, far from enjoying predominance in Europe, suffered from financial crisis and economic and political inferiority to Germany. Versailles was thus the "Boche" peace, and the only path to a stable Europe seemed to lie through permanent restriction of German economic and political unity. Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions.The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Walter McDougall offers an original analysis of Versailles diplomacy from the standpoint of the power that had the most direct interest and took the first initiatives in the search for a solution to the German problem. The author's new view of the struggle for execution or revision of the Versailles treaty holds sober implications for assessment of the political origins of international anarchy during the 1930s and European integration in the 1950s. He shows that the Treaty of Versailles was unenforceable, and that the French postwar government, far from enjoying predominance in Europe, suffered from financial crisis and economic and political inferiority to Germany. Versailles was thus the "Boche" peace, and the only path to a stable Europe seemed to lie through permanent restriction of German economic and political unity. Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions.The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This highly acclaimed study approaches the space race as a problem in comparative public policy. Drawing on published literature, archival sources in both the United States and Europe, interviews with many of the key participants, and important declassified material, such as the National Security Council's first policy paper on space, McDougall examines U.S., European, and Soviet space programs and their politics. Opening with a short account of Nikolai Kibalchich, a late nineteenth-century Russian rocketry theoretician, McDougall argues that the Soviet Union made its way into space first because it was the world's first "technocracy"-which he defines as "the institutionalization of technological change for state purpose." He also explores the growth of a political economy of technology in both the Soviet Union and the United States.

The American story is one of great physical, intellectual, and spiritual adventure. Gems of American History explores how this extraordinary republic came to be—and what is required to preserve its legacy of liberty.In this collection of twelve essays, the renowned historian Walter McDougall examines some of the most pivotal events and figures of the American saga to date. He revisits the “Machiavellian moment” that ignited the awakening of republican thought across the Atlantic. He reflects on the forg­ing of America’s civic identity from its earliest seeds in the colonial era. His profiles of William Penn, Benjamin Franklin, and the philanthropist and tycoon Stephen Girard reveal the profound role Philadelphia played in shaping the nation. He recounts the story of the Wright brothers’ romance with flight and how it captures America’s indefatigable spirit.McDougall also warns that, for more than a century, leaders following in the footsteps of Woodrow Wilson have steered the United States down a path of foreign policy ruin that undermines our national interests and threatens our national character.Leavened with a lifelong scholar’s wisdom and insight, Gems of American History assem­bles the wide-ranging sources of American principles and traditions, many of which have been lost to ideological amnesia, in a way that helps explain who we are and where we are going.