Product Review

In a major revision of this popular text, Dr. Justus Doenecke integrates scholarly research conducted in the 1990s to offer readers a fresh picture of the major events and historiographical controversies in American diplomacy in the decade before Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.

Individual chapters center on the aftermath of World War I, the Manchurian crisis, the expansion of Germany and Japan and the U.S. response, FDR's policy towards Europe from the Munich conference to his "shoot-on-sight" orders, and Roosevelt's stance toward Asia from the termination of the 1911 trade treaty with Japan and the breaking of diplomatic relations. A final chapter considers the background of the Pearl Harbor attack, stressing not only the role of Admiral Yamamoto but the revisionist arguments concerning event, including the "devil theory" of the president's culpability.

This third edition includes entirely new material including discussions of Roosevelt's leadership style, the recognition of the Soviet Union, policy toward Cuba and Mexico, Pan-American conferences, the 1940 mission of Sumner Welles, the Four Freedoms, and the U.S. Army victory plan of autumn 1940. Certain other passages have been expanded, such as those concerning the background of American anti-interventionism, major peace groups, the London Economic Conference of 1933, the Ethiopian conflict, the Spanish Civil War, the Nye Committee, the predicament of Jewish refugees, the Soviet-Finnish war, FDR's Japan diplomacy and his last-minute assurances to British ambassador Halifax, and the latest arguments over Pearl Harbor. Also new to this edition is a collection of striking photographs.

The third edition of this informative and engaging text-one enjoyed by instructors and students alike for decades-is appropriate for use in the U.S. history survey as well as in course on twentieth-century history, American foreign diplomacy, and international relations.