From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776

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The Oxford History of the United States is the most respected multi-volume
history of our nation in print. The series includes three Pulitzer Prize-winners, a New York
Times bestseller, and winners of prestigious Bancroft and Parkman Prizes. From Colony to
Superpower is the only thematic volume commissioned for the series. Here George C. Herring uses
foreign relations as the lens through which to tell the story of America's dramatic rise from
thirteen disparate colonies huddled along the Atlantic coast to the world's greatest superpower.
A sweeping account of United States' foreign relations and diplomacy, this magisterial volume
documents America's interaction with other peoples and nations of the world. Herring tells a
story of stunning successes and sometimes tragic failures, captured in a fast-paced narrative
that illuminates the central importance of foreign relations to the existence and survival of
the nation, and highlights its ongoing impact on the lives of ordinary citizens. He shows how
policymakers defined American interests broadly to include territorial expansion, access to
growing markets, and the spread of an "American way" of life. And Herring does all this in a
story rich in human drama and filled with epic events. Statesmen such as Benjamin Franklin and
Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman and Dean Acheson played key roles in America's rise to world
power. But America's expansion as a nation also owes much to the adventurers and explorers, the
sea captains, merchants and captains of industry, the missionaries and diplomats, who discovered
or charted new lands, developed new avenues of commerce, and established and defended the
nation's interests in foreign lands. From the American Revolution to the fifty-year struggle
with communism and conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, From Colony to Superpower tells the
dramatic story of America's emergence as superpower--its birth in revolution, its troubled
present, and its uncertain future.