Traces the history of the Marshall Plan and the efforts to reconstruct western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism during a two-year period that saw the collapse of postwar U.S.-Soviet relations and the beginning of the Cold War.

Building the Post-War World offers for the first time an overall account of Modern Architecture in the decade after the Second World War.

Much has been written about the collapse of World War II's Grand Alliance into a sharply divided postwar world, the onset of the Cold War, and the somewhat reluctant assumption of Western leadership by the United States. Plans for an extensive postwar overseas military basing structure and the nexus of political, military, and commercial interests which drove that planning are important parts of the story that have gone largely unexplored. In many ways, the evolution of planning for overseas bases from 1942 through 1948 reflected the growing sophistication and political maturation of American foreign and military policy. In spite of the dismal failure of the League of Nations, early planning focused on basing requirements for an envisioned postwar international police force. The unabashed idealism expressed in this notion and the breathtaking assumptions required to make it feasible appear exceptionally naive to the contemporary observer, but only in the crisp focus of hindsight. Many believed that a sweeping victory by the Grand Alliance could make all things possible, even a successful international police force to keep the peace and bring order out of postwar chaos. Meanwhile, national security concepts based on hemispheric defense continued to dominate much of the thinking about postwar basing requirements well into 1945. These were very traditional ideas with roots reaching back over 100 years to the Monroe Doctrine. In the two decades just before World War II, these traditional concepts had taken on physical substance in hemispheric defense plans, exercises, and operations, with many centered on the protection of the Panama Canal and the shipping lanes leading to and from the canal. Other prewar plans expanded the hemispheric defense idea across the Pacific to the US territories such as the Hawaiian and Philippine Islands. In sum, the notion of hemispheric defense, with its expansion across the Pacific, was deeply rooted in the American psyche, which otherwise had strong isolationist tendencies. However, the idea of an expanded hemispheric defense would be dwarfed by the demands of the postwar world. As World War II entered its final phases, friction with the Soviet Union grew, and it became quite clear that American national security had to be considered from a global perspective. The perceived threat of a hostile Soviet Union (determined to spread its control and influence) was the principal driver behind the globalization basing plans. A second was the obvious truth that for the foreseeable future, only the United States had the wherewithal to effectively oppose the Soviets. Great Britain was virtually bankrupt, and its people were exhausted from the strain of the war. France was in tatters both physically and politically. Germany was prostrate in its own rubble and divided between East and West. Moreover, to a great many victims of German aggression, the thought of a rearmed West Germany, even as a bulwark against the Soviet menace, was anathema.

In the years following World War II the health and well-being of the nation was of primary concern to the British government. The essays in this collection examine the relationship between health and stress in post-war Britain through a series of carefully connected case studies.

Much has been written about the collapse of World War Il's Grand Alliance into a sharply divided postwar world, the onset of the Cold War, and the somewhat reluctant assumption of Western leadership by the United States. Plans for an extensive postwar overseas military basing structure and the nexus of political, military, and commercial interests which drove that planning are important parts of the story that have gone largely unexplored. In many ways, the evolution of planning for overseas bases from 1942 through 1948 reflected the growing sophistication and political maturation of American foreign and military policy. In spite of the dismal failure of the League of Nations, early planning focused on basing requirements for an envisioned postwar international police force. The unabashed idealism expressed in this notion and the breathtaking assumptions required to make it feasible appear exceptionally naive to the contemporary observer, but only in the crisp focus of hindsight. Many believed that a sweeping victory by the Grand Alliance could make all things possible, even a successful international police force to keep the peace and bring order out of postwar chaos.