What Is America?
A Short History of the New World Order
From the award-winning, #1 bestselling author of A Short History of Progress comes another surprising, frightening and essential book.
The USA is now the world’s lone superpower, whose deeds could make or break this century. For better and worse, America has Americanized the world. How did a marginal frontier society, in a mere two centuries, become the de facto ruler of the world? Why do America’s great achievements in democracy, prosperity and civil rights now seem threatened by forces within itself?
Brimming with insight into history and human behaviour, and written in Wright’s captivating style, What Is America? shows how this came to pass; how the United States, which regards itself as the most modern country on earth, is also deeply…
Ronald Wright is the internationally acclaimed author of A Scientific Romance, winner of Britain's David Higham Prize for Fiction. His other major bestsellers include Time Among the Maya and Stolen Continents, and an acclaimed collection of travel pieces, Home and Away. He lives on Salt Spring Island, BC.