The world transformed : 1945 to the present / created by Michael H. Hunt.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 471-482) and index.

Preface ; Introduction: The 1945 Watershed ; International Politics Reconfigured ; Wilson and Lenin as Rival Visionaries ; World War II and the Onset of the Cold War ; The Role of Nationalism ; The Global Economy in Transition ; The First Phase of Globalization Begins, 1870s-1914 ; Globalization Reborn, 1945 to the Present ; The Colonial System on the Brink ; Vulnerabilities of Empire ; The Appearance of the "Third World" ; PART I. HOPES AND FEARS CONTEND, 1945-1953 ; 1. The Cold War: Toward Soviet-American Confrontation ; Origins of the Rivalry ; From Cooperation to Conflict ; U.S. Policy in Transition ; Stalin's Pursuit of Territory and Security ; Stalin and the Postwar Settlement ; From Europe to the Periphery ; Drawing the Line in Europe ; The Nuclear Arms Race Accelerates ; Opening a Front in the Third World ; Limited War in Korea ; Superpower Societies in an Unquiet Time ; Soviet Society under Stress ; The U.S. Anti-Communist Consensus ; Conclusion ; 2. The International Economy: Out of the Ruins ; Anglo-American Remedies for an Ailing System ; Keynesian Economics and a Design for Prosperity ; The Bretton Woods Agreements ; The U.S. Rescue Operation ; Occupation and Recovery in Japan ; Recovery in Western Europe ; The American Economic Powerhouse ; Good Times Return ; Disney and the U.S. Economic Edge ; "Coca-colonization" and the Mass Consumption Model ; European Resistance to "Americanization" ; Conclusion ; 3. The Third World: First Tremors in Asia ; The Appeal of Revolution and the Strong State ; The Chinese Communist Triumph ; Vietnam's Revolutionary Struggle ; New States under Conservative Elites ; India's Status-quo Independence ; The Collaborative Impulse in the Philippines ; Conclusion ; PART II. THE COLD WAR SYSTEM UNDER STRESS, 1953-1968 ; 4. The Cold War: A Tenuous Accommodation ; The Beginnings of Coexistence ; Khrushchev under Pressure ; Crosscurrents in American Policy ; Crisis Points ; To the Nuclear Brink in Cuba ; The Vietnam Quagmire ; The Quake of '68 ; The American Epicenter ; The Ground Shifts Abroad ; Conclusion ; 5. Abundance and Discontent in the Developed World ; America at the Apogee ; Triumphant at Home and Abroad ; Warning Signs of Economic Troubles ; Recovery in Western Europe and Japan ; The Old World's New Course ; Fiat and Europe's Corporate Aristocracy ; The Second Japanese Miracle ; Voices of Discontent ; The New Environmentalism ; The Feminist Upsurge ; Critics of Global Economic Inequalities ; Conclusion ; 6. Third-World Hopes at High Tide ; Revolutionary Trajectories in East Asia ; The Maoist Experiment in China ; Vietnam's Fight for the South ; The Caribbean Basin: Between Reaction and Revolution ; Guatemala's "Ten Years of Spring" ; Cuba and the Revolution that Survived ; Decolonization in Sub-Saharan Africa ; Ghana and Nkrumah's African Socialism ; Colonial Legacies in Ghana and Beyond ; Remaking the Middle East and North Africa ; Economic Nationalism in Iran ; A New Order for Egypt and the Region ; Colonial Crisis in Algeria ; Conclusion ; PART III. FROM COLD WAR TO GLOBALIZATION, 1968-1991 ; 7. The Cold War comes to a Close ; The Rise and Fall of Detente ; The Nixon Policy Turnaround ; The Breshnev Era ; Western Europe and Detente ; The U.S. Retreat from Detente ; The Gorbachev Initiatives ; Glasnost, Perestroika, and a New Foreign Policy ; The Demise of the Soviet System ; Explaining the Cold War Outcome ; The Role of Leaders ; Impersonal Forces ; Conclusion ; 8. Global Markets: One System, Three Centers ; The United States and the North American Bloc ; The Erosion of U.S. Dominance ; The Free Market Faith ; The Rise of an East Asian Bloc ; Japan Stays on Course ; The Rise of the "Little Dragons" ; Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics ; Vietnam in China's Footsteps ; Revived Bloc Building in Europe ; Renewed Integration and the E.U. ; Social and Cultural Developments ; Post-'89 and the Opening to the East ; Conclusion ; 9. Divergent Paths in the Third World ; The Changing Face of Revolution ; Cambodia's Genocidal Revolution ; Religious Challenge in Iran ; Revolutionary Aftershock in the Middle East ; Opposition to Settler Colonialism ; South African Apartheid under Siege ; Conflict over Palestine ; Repression and Resistance in Guatemala ; Dreams of Development in Disarray ; Stalemated Economies ; The Population Explosion ; Women and Development ; Conclusion ; Conclusion: Globalization Ascendant, The 1990s and Beyond ; The Perils and Possibilities of Globalization ; Environmental Stresses ; One World or Two? ; An Emerging International Regime ; Globalization as U.S. Hegemony? ; "The American Century" ; Playing the Global Policeman ; Resistance Abroad ; Notes ; Index

Written by one of America's most distinguished scholars of US-East Asian relations, The World Transformed examines the history of the last half century from a truly global perspective.