The opening of various personal and party archives over the past few years has now made the entire Adenauer era accessible for historians. Using this material to re-examine existing conventional wisdom about the period, the text traces the roles of Adenauer and the CDU/CSU is shaping the Westbindung.

This volume explores the 'Americanization' of Central and Eastern Europe during and after the Cold War. It seeks to revisit and expand this critical concept by investigating previously overlooked perspectives and new comparative constellations. The Iron Curtain has frequently been seen as a tightly sealed border between East and West. However, as the contributions to this collection illustrate, it proved remarkably permeable for American goods and lifestyles which generated and gratified a range of often ambivalent desires and fantasies. This book attends to the ensuing 'messiness' of cultural transfer and mixing, as well as to the role 'America' has played in these processes. In twelve case studies, a broad spectrum of disciplinary angles and diverse geo-biographical horizons come together to examine the elusive dynamics of ambivalent Americanizations in areas such as music, television, and material culture.

From its beginning, the relationship between Europe and America has been marked by profound ambivalence. Europe (especially Britain) was both admired and resented, held up for imitation and cursed. For much of American history Europe was respected for its culture, aristocratic manners, eloquence, and social prestige but feared for its class struggles, authoritarianism, state religions, and fratricidal wars. The Europeans felt Americans were uncouth, excessively individualistic, and violent. Although the upper classes were often anti-American, the working class initially viewed the United States as the land of opportunity, equality, and freedom. The United States became the world's most successful multiracial and multiethnic society, but its roots were European (over 80 percent of Americans derived from European stock). The culture, laws, and institutions also largely came from Europe, especially from Britain. But although Europe greatly influenced the United States until World War II, thereafter the United States has shaped Europe. And although for much of American history, Europe was a Mecca for American artists and literati, after World War II American culture became more self-confident and assertive--a reflection of U.S. military and economic might. No longer would the United States shy away from involvement with Europe; instead the United States determined to stay in Europe, rebuild it, and pressure the Europeans into economic cooperation through a customs union and into the military alliance through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). NATO would protect Europeans from the Soviet Union and from one another. The result is a partial Americanization of Europe and the dominance of American culture, technology, business methods, and science. American power and influence created a good deal of hostility, especially from the British and French, who resented the loss of their leadership. But overall, American and Europeans respected each other, depended on each other, and created, by massive reciprocal relationships, the Atlantic Community, the greatest political economic and cultural association in world history.

With the current state of foreign affairs, the terms "Americanism" and "Americanization" sometimes take on an unexpected--and an unflattering--connotation. Americanism essentially involves values, beliefs, ideals, goods and practices in local settings outside the United States that are in some way related or attributed to American influence. While the validity of this influence may be under scrutiny, it requires a detailed historical--and sometimes cultural--analysis to understand all the dynamics and implications of Americanization. A variety of factors contributes to this influence, including the preoccupation and reception of the relevant culture itself. For instance, many European countries have at times demonstrated a preoccupation with all things American which was not necessarily swayed by any action of America itself. The overall actualization of Americanization, however, encompasses a number of societal dimensions, including power differentials in the exchange processes concerned. Informed by a history of relevant developments since the early nineteenth century, this volume presents an in-depth critical analysis of the Americanization process. Beginning with a survey of early European preoccupations with things American, the book goes on to discuss European concerns regarding American influence after World War II. The work then looks at Americanism and its influence within the United States itself, especially regarding developments during the New Deal and beyond. The primary goal of the analysis is the construction of an interpretative framework, allowing for a more balanced approach to the study of Americanism abroad. Written from a critical, social-emancipatory perspective, the author's approach blends economic, military, social, political, cultural and psychological dimensions as well as an examination of the ways in which these areas interact. Finally, Americanism is examined as part of a U.S.-style corporate globalization at the current juncture. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Providing a useful analysis of and framework for understanding immigration and assimilation narratives, anupama jain's How to Be South Asian in America considers the myth of the American Dream in fiction (Meena Alexander's Manhattan Music), film (American Desi, American Chai), and personal testimonies. By interrogating familiar American stories in the context of more supposedly exotic narratives, jain illuminates complexities of belonging that also reveal South Asians' anxieties about belonging, (trans)nationalism, and processes of cultural interpenetration. jain argues that these stories transform as well as reflect cultural processes, and she shows just how aspects of identity—gender, sexual, class, ethnic, national—are shaped by South Asians' accommodation of and resistance to mainstream American culture.

Throughout the Cold War, the United States encountered unexpected challenges from Italy and France, two countries with the strongest, and determinedly most anti-American, Communist Parties in Western Europe. Based primarily on new evidence from communist archives in France and Italy, as well as research archives in the United States, Alessandro Brogi's original study reveals how the United States was forced by political opposition within these two core Western countries to reassess its own anticommunist strategies, its image, and the general meaning of American liberal capitalist culture and ideology. Brogi shows that the resistance to Americanization was a critical test for the French and Italian communists' own legitimacy and existence. Their anti-Americanism was mostly dogmatic and driven by the Soviet Union, but it was also, at crucial times, subtle and ambivalent, nurturing fascination with the American culture of dissent. The staunchly anticommunist United States, Brogi argues, found a successful balance to fighting the communist threat in France and Italy by employing diplomacy and fostering instances of mild dissent in both countries. Ultimately, both the French and Italian communists failed to adapt to the forces of modernization that stemmed both from indigenous factors and from American influence. Confronting America illuminates the political, diplomatic, economic, and cultural conflicts behind the U.S.-communist confrontation.

A 2001 Companion providing an overview of the history of writing by women in nineteenth-century America.