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Overview"Focusing on portrayals of Mussolini's Italy, Hitler's Germany, and Stalin's Russia in US films, magazine and newspaper articles, books, plays, speeches and other texts, Benjamin Alpers traces changing American understandings of dictatorship from the late 1920s through the early years of the Cold War. During the early 1930s, most Americans' conception of dictatorship focused on the dictator. Whether viewed as heroic or horrific, the dictator was represented as a figure of great, masculine power and effectiveness. As the Great Depression gripped the United States, a few people - including conservative members of the press and some Hollywood filmmakers - even dared to suggest that dictatorship might be the answer to America's social problems. In the late 1930s, American explanations of dictatorship shifted focus from individual leaders to the movements that empowered them. Totalitarianism became the image against which a view of democracy emphasizing tolerance and pluralism and disparaging mass movements developed. First used to describe dictatorships of both right and left, the term """"totalitarianism"""" fell out of use upon the US entry into World War II. With the war's end and the collapse of the US-Soviet alliance, however, concerns about totalitarianism lay the foundation for the emerging cold war." Full Product DetailsAuthor: Benjamin L. AlpersPublisher: The University of North Carolina Press Imprint: The University of North Carolina Press Edition: New edition Dimensions: Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.40cm , Length: 23.50cm Weight: 0.606kg ISBN: 9780807854167ISBN 10: 0807854166 Pages: 416 Publication Date: 31 January 2003 Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , General , Undergraduate Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: Awaiting stock  The supplier is currently out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out for you. Table of ContentsReviewsA first-rate book. Others have told parts of this story, but no one has put it all together as Alpers does. His readings of oft-analyzed texts such as George Orwell's 1984 and Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism are illuminating and fresh, and he brings to light a good deal of less familiar source material. (Robert Westbrook, University of Rochester) [This] masterly study of the historical dimensions of this process of polarization is to be welcomed. . . . It is the kind of history that can revitalize our interest in ideas and events that we had long thought we understood. --International History Review Alpers has made visible an important aspect of American intellectual history in the twentieth century. . . . [He] convincingly delineates an exciting intellectual history that has Orson Welles and Charlie Chaplin converse with Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Joseph Schumpeter. --American Historical Review Will gladden the hearts of anyone interested in communication history during critical periods in the 20th century. . . . A unique contribution to American political and cultural history. --Political Communication Author InformationBenjamin L. Alpers is Reach for Excellence Associate Professor in the Honors College and associate professor of history and film and video studies at the University of Oklahoma. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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