"A Failed Vision of Empire examines Manifest Destiny over the nineteenth century by challenging contested moments in the continental expansion of the United States to show that the ideal was not wildly popular, nor did it typically succeed in unifying expansionists"--

Since the early twentieth century, historians have traditionally defined manifest destiny as the belief that the United States was destined to expand from coast to coast. This generation of historians has posed manifest destiny as a unifying ideology of the nineteenth century, one that was popular and pervasive and ultimately fulfilled in the late 1840s when the United States acquired the Pacific Coast. However, the story of manifest destiny was never quite that simple. In A Failed Vision of Empire Daniel J. Burge examines the belief in manifest destiny over the nineteenth century by analyzing contested moments in the continental expansion of the United States, arguing that the ideology was ultimately unsuccessful. By examining speeches, plays, letters, diaries, newspapers, and other sources, Burge reveals how Americans debated the wisdom of expansion, challenged expansionists, and disagreed over what the boundaries of the United States should look like. A Failed Vision of Empire is the first work to capture the messy, complicated, and yet far more compelling story of manifest destiny's failure, debunking in the process one of the most pervasive myths of modern American history.

This book presents a problems-oriented approach to the diagnosis and treatment of common eye diseases. The text concentrates on common eye diseases which are likely to be seen by general practitioners and optometrists at the primary care level.

The ability to see deeply affects how human beings perceive and interpret the world around them. For most people, eyesight is part of everyday communication, social activities, educational and professional pursuits, the care of others, and the maintenance of personal health, independence, and mobility. Functioning eyes and vision system can reduce an adult's risk of chronic health conditions, death, falls and injuries, social isolation, depression, and other psychological problems. In children, properly maintained eye and vision health contributes to a child's social development, academic achievement, and better health across the lifespan. The public generally recognizes its reliance on sight and fears its loss, but emphasis on eye and vision health, in general, has not been integrated into daily life to the same extent as other health promotion activities, such as teeth brushing; hand washing; physical and mental exercise; and various injury prevention behaviors. A larger population health approach is needed to engage a wide range of stakeholders in coordinated efforts that can sustain the scope of behavior change. The shaping of socioeconomic environments can eventually lead to new social norms that promote eye and vision health. Making Eye Health a Population Health Imperative: Vision for Tomorrow proposes a new population-centered framework to guide action and coordination among various, and sometimes competing, stakeholders in pursuit of improved eye and vision health and health equity in the United States. Building on the momentum of previous public health efforts, this report also introduces a model for action that highlights different levels of prevention activities across a range of stakeholders and provides specific examples of how population health strategies can be translated into cohesive areas for action at federal, state, and local levels.

When children and adults apply for disability benefits and claim that a visual impairment has limited their ability to function, the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) is required to determine their eligibility. To ensure that these determinations are made fairly and consistently, SSA has developed criteria for eligibility and a process for assessing each claimant against the criteria. Visual Impairments: Determining Eligibility for Social Security Benefits examines SSA's methods of determining disability for people with visual impairments, recommends changes that could be made now to improve the process and the outcomes, and identifies research needed to develop improved methods for the future. The report assesses tests of visual function, including visual acuity and visual fields whether visual impairments could be measured directly through visual task performance or other means of assessing disability. These other means include job analysis databases, which include information on the importance of vision to job tasks or skills, and measures of health-related quality of life, which take a person-centered approach to assessing visual function testing of infants and children, which differs in important ways from standard adult tests.