Old World, New World: Great Britain and America From the Beginning by KATHLEEN BURKReview by: WALTER RUSSELL MEADForeign Affairs, Vol. 87, No. 6 (November/December 2008), pp. 164-165Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20699397 .

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Recent Books

American history dating back to the colonial era. He grounds his argument in a rich,

detailed, and thoroughly researched dis cussion of U.S. diplomatic history focused on key moments in the country's growth. His account of the cultural and political context for this continuing expansion are

not quite as strong; the books greatest fault is that, with the exception of an un

usually strong and balanced description of Mexican politics at the time of the Mexican American War and, to a lesser extent, its

description of British politics at the close of the American Revolution, the book rarely gives the targets of U.S. expansionism the

thorough treatment it gives the Americans.

This failure, particularly apparent in the accounts of the fall of the Hawaiian monar

chy and the Spanish-American War, too

often means that the reader does not have

enough of a grasp of the opportunities and constraints facing U.S. policymakers to fully understand the choices they made.

to be done next. Still, with their book's contributors comprising Stephen Van

Evera, Robert Kagan, Charles Maier,

G.JohnIkenberry,James Kurth, Samantha Power, David Kennedy, Barry Eichengreen, Douglas Irwin, Francis Fukuyama, and Niall Ferguson, the editors have assembled some of today's most important and cogent thinkers on U.S. foreign policy. A final

essay by Leffler and Legro highlights both the similarities of argument and the key points of contention among the contribu

tors and succeeds in describing some of the

key choices the next president must make.

Old World, New World: Great Britain and America From the Beginning,

by

Kathleen Burk. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008, 816 pp. $35.00.

Historians are the last isolationists in the United States; standard treatments of

American history almost always fail to

ground it in the global context. Econom

ically, politically, culturally, intellectually, Americans have always been part of a wider world, and American history cannot be

clearly understood until it is reintegrated into the history of the world. The first and

most important task for ambitious histori ans out to reshape the traditional under

standing of the American past is to come to

terms with the immense role that the U.S.

British relationship played for so many years. The United Kingdom was the United States' most important trading partner, economic rival, political model, security threat, and source of ideas. Generation

after generation of American politicians, merchants, investors, intellectuals, artists,

political theorists, reformers, and religious

figures were shaped by the similarities, differences, rivalries, and cooperative enter

prises of the two great English-speaking

To Lead the World: American Strategy After the Bush Doctrine, edited by

melvyn p. leffler and jeffrey w. legro. Oxford University Press,

2008,320 pp. $17.95. With a distinguished cast of contributors, the editors Leffler and Legro have put together an unusually interesting and

useful collection of essays on possible directions for U.S. foreign policy under a new administration. There is at least

the beginning of a consensus among the

experts: virtually all of them agree that the Bush administrations blunders have

damaged the United States' stature and

power abroad but that the damage can

still be repaired. This consensus would

be more useful if the experts did not dis

agree so fundamentally on what ought

[164] FOREIGN AFFA 1RS? Volume87No. 6

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Recent Booh

societies, yet American historians have

only rarely and intermittently addressed this great subject. Burks Old World,

New World is more than a good book; it

points toward a new kind of history that is much needed. Nonetheless, the book is uneven; the sections on diplomatic his

tory are often strong, sometimes brilliant, whereas the treatments of cultural and

intellectual history generally disappoint. No matter; what Burk does well is important, and as she and others explore this great

subject, they will produce a body of work that will both sharpen Americans' under

standing of the nations past and illuminate the challenges currently being faced.

humane treatment that existed under

slavery disappeared under this system; the conditions were worse, and the mortality rate was higher in many convict encamp

ments than among pre-Civil War slaves.

Blackmon does an extraordinary job of

re-creating this system for the reader and

using old court records and other sources

to tell the story of individuals caught up in this chamber of horrors. Jim Crow was

much more than discrimination; it was a

system of oppression, and its legacy is in some ways more corrosive than that of

slavery. This book will help readers begin to grasp the horror of an evil that persisted into living memory.

The Power Makers: Steam, Electricity, and

the Men Who Invented Modern America.

by maury klein. Bloomsbury Press,

2008, 560 pp. $29.99. Conventional histories of the Industrial Revolution focus primarily on the tech

nological and financial history of produc tive industries such as textiles and steel;

Klein, professor emeritus at the University of Rhode Island, fills an important gap with a thorough and engaging study of the technological and financial history of the production and distribution of

power itself. The development of steam

and electric power shaped the horizons

of transport, heavy industry, and the

rising metropolises of the industrial era.

Klein s book illuminates the interplay of scientific theory, technological progress, and the development of the new business

models and corporate structures that

each of these power revolutions entailed.

Readers will come away from this important and well-argued book with a significantly enhanced understanding of the rise and

development of modern America.

Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans

From the Civil War to World War II. BY DOUGLAS A. BLACKMON.

Doubleday, 2008, 480 pp. $29.95. This harrowing book by the Atlanta bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal reviews a vital but little-studied aspect of southern life in the 75 years following the American Civil War: the systematic abuse of the court system to hold hundreds of thousands

of African Americans in slavery. Convicted

of minor misdemeanors on trumped-up

charges, black defendants unable to pay

judgments and fines were forced to sign labor contracts with any whites who chose

to pay their fines. The labor contracts gave the contract owners the right to discipline their workers with whips and chains and could be extended indefinitely, essentially at the whims of the contract holders. Leasing convicts was big business, providing more than ten percent of the state of Alabamas

income in some years, and convicts toiled

not only on plantations but also in factories

and mines. Moreover, the incentives for

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