Cold War Holidays

Download or read book Cold War Holidays written by Christopher Endy and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2005-12-15 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moving beyond traditional state-centered conceptions of foreign relations, Christopher Endy approaches the Cold War era relationship between France and the United States from the original perspective of tourism. Focusing on American travel in France after World War II, Cold War Holidays shows how both the U.S. and French governments actively cultivated and shaped leisure travel to advance their foreign policy agendas. From the U.S. government's campaign to encourage American vacations in Western Europe as part of the Marshall Plan, to Charles de Gaulle's aggressive promotion of American tourism to France in the 1960s, Endy reveals how consumerism and globalization played a major role in transatlantic affairs. Yet contrary to analyses of globalization that emphasize the decline of the nation-state, Endy argues that an era notable for the rise of informal transnational exchanges was also a time of entrenched national identity and persistent state power. A lively array of voices informs Endy's analysis: Parisian hoteliers and cafe waiters, American and French diplomats, advertising and airline executives, travel writers, and tourists themselves. The resulting portrait reveals tourism as a colorful and consequential illustration of the changing nature of international relations in an age of globalization.

Download or read book The Holiday Makers written by Richard K. Popp and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2012-05-16 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between the 1930s and 1960s, the spread of new transportation networks and the democratization of paid vacations struck many observers as a sign that tourism was growing into a folkway of modern American life. Easy mobility and free time lay at the heart of this idealized vision, and vacations were seen as a ritualized expression of the movement and egalitarianism that characterized midcentury modernity. The Holiday Makers tells the story of how advertisers sold tourist travel in popular magazines during this era, transforming consumer culture in the process.

Download or read book America's Forgotten Holiday written by Donna T. Haverty-Stacke and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though now a largely forgotten holiday in the United States, May Day was founded here in 1886 by an energized labor movement as a part of its struggle for the eight-hour day. In ensuing years, May Day took on new meaning, and by the early 1900s had become an annual rallying point for anarchists, socialists, and communists around the world. Yet American workers and radicals also used May Day to advance alternative definitions of what it meant to be an American and what America should be as a nation. Mining contemporary newspapers, party and union records, oral histories, photographs, and rare film footage, America’s Forgotten Holiday explains how May Days celebrants, through their colorful parades and mass meetings, both contributed to the construction of their own radical American identities and publicized alternative social and political models for the nation. This fascinating story of May Day in America reveals how many contours of American nationalism developed in dialogue with political radicals and workers, and uncovers the cultural history of those who considered themselves both patriotic and dissenting Americans.

Download or read book America's Public Holidays, 1865-1920 written by Ellen M. Litwicki and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2013-08-06 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the revered Memorial Day to the forgotten Lasties Day, America's Public Holidays is a timely and thoughtful analysis of how the civic culture of America has been fashioned. By analyzing how holidays became a forum for expressing patriotism, how public tradition has been invented, and how the definition of America itself was changed, Ellen Litwicki tells the intriguing story of the elite effort to create new holidays and the variety of responses from ordinary Americans.

Download or read book Negotiating Paradise written by Dennis Merrill and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2009-09-01 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Accounts of U.S. empire building in Latin America typically portray politically and economically powerful North Americans descending on their southerly neighbors to engage in lopsided negotiations. Dennis Merrill's comparative history of U.S. tourism in Latin America in the twentieth century demonstrates that empire is a more textured, variable, and interactive system of inequality and resistance than commonly assumed. In his examination of interwar Mexico, early Cold War Cuba, and Puerto Rico during the Alliance for Progress, Merrill demonstrates how tourists and the international travel industry facilitated the expansion of U.S. consumer and cultural power in Latin America. He also shows the many ways in which local service workers, labor unions, business interests, and host governments vied to manage the Yankee invasion. While national leaders negotiated treaties and military occupations, visitors and hosts navigated interracial encounters in bars and brothels, confronted clashing notions of gender and sexuality at beachside resorts, and negotiated national identities. Highlighting the everyday realities of U.S. empire in ways often overlooked, Merrill's analysis provides historical context for understanding the contemporary debate over the costs and benefits of globalization.

Download or read book Backpack Ambassadors written by Richard Ivan Jobs and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-05-23 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even today, in an era of cheap travel and constant connection, the image of young people backpacking across Europe remains seductively romantic. In Backpack Ambassadors, Richard Ivan Jobs tells the story of backpacking in Europe in its heyday, the decades after World War II, revealing that these footloose young people were doing more than just exploring for themselves. Rather, with each step, each border crossing, each friendship, they were quietly helping knit the continent together. From the Berlin Wall to the beaches of Spain, the Spanish Steps in Rome to the Pudding Shop in Istanbul, Jobs tells the stories of backpackers whose personal desire for freedom of movement brought the people and places of Europe into ever-closer contact. As greater and greater numbers of young people trekked around the continent, and a truly international youth culture began to emerge, the result was a Europe that, even in the midst of Cold War tensions, found its people more and more connected, their lives more and more integrated. Drawing on archival work in eight countries and five languages, and featuring trenchant commentary on the relevance of this period for contemporary concerns about borders and migration, Backpack Ambassadors brilliantly recreates a movement that was far more influential and important than its footsore travelers could ever have realized.

Download or read book Going Soft? The US and China Go Global written by Mei Renyi and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-04-11 with total page 617 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is “soft power”? How can a country acquire and enjoy it? Is it the product of public or private initiatives? How significant is “soft power” in world affairs? The concept of “soft power,” the idea that international success depends not just upon weaponry, force, and military coercion, but also on admiration and respect for a country’s culture and way of life, is winning ever-greater global attention. As China enjoys ever-increasing heft on the global scene, many Chinese officials seek to emulate the past success of the United States in dominating the world, not simply militarily, but in terms of influence and prestige. Most are very conscious that “soft power” can be extremely valuable in terms of supplementing and boosting their country’s military and strategic position, but are often uncertain as to how to deploy the instruments of propaganda and cultural diplomacy most effectively. The essays in this volume, largely written by scholars based in mainland China, represent an extended effort to debate and assess the theoretical concept of “soft power” and just what it means and how it works in practice. The authors focus upon the practical impact and implications of “soft power” in diverse settings and situations in the United States past and present. How, they ask, does “soft power” relate to issues of religion, gender, race, and social equality, at home and abroad? What do American elections and political rhetoric do for American “soft power”? Will China succeed in rivalling the United States in power, whether hard, soft, or smart? And how will “soft power” feature in US-China relations, present and future?