Overview

We thought we knew the story of the twentieth century. For many in the West, after the two world conflicts and the long cold war, the verdict was clear: democratic values had prevailed over dictatorship. But if the twentieth century meant the triumph of liberalism, as many intellectuals proclaimed, why have the era's darker impulses--ethnic nationalism, racist violence, and populist authoritarianism--revived? The Project-State and Its Rivals offers a radical alternative interpretation that takes us from the transforming challenges of the world wars to our own time. Charles S. Maier looks to the political and economic impulses that propelled societies through a century when territorial states and transnational forces both claimed power, engaging sometimes as rivals and sometimes as allies. Maier focuses on recurring institutional constellations: project-states including both democracies and dictatorships; new forms of imperial domination; global networks of finance; and the international associations, foundations, and NGOs that tried to shape public life. In this account, Maier invites a rethinking of the long twentieth century. His history of state entanglements with capital, the decline of public projects, and the fragility of governance explains the fraying of our own civic culture--but also allows hope for its recovery.

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"Charles S. Maier is Leverett Saltonstall Research Professor of History at Harvard University. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Council on Foreign Relations, he has written a number of award-winning books, including Recasting Bourgeois Europe, The Unmasterable Past, Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany, and Once Within Borders. Stephen Caffrey has been a stage actor in New York, Los Angeles, and across the country for over thirty years. On film and television he directed and starred in the series Tour of Duty for over three seasons on CBS. He received an Emmy nomination for his year on All my Children. He has had leading roles in many TV movies and miniseries, as well as the Sundance Film Festival winner Longtime Companion. He also has had numerous guest star appearances, including on the famous ""Yada Yada"" episode of Seinfeld. He was more recently seen in Bosch, Cinema Verite on HBO, and recurring on NBC's American Odyssey. His stage work includes shows at New York Theatre Workshop, Classic Stage Co., Mark Taper Forum, Geffen Playhouse, Geva, Seattle Rep., Cleveland Playhouse, Cincinnati Playhouse, American Conservatory Theatre, Berkeley Rep., Old Globe, Hartford Stage, Royal George/Chicago, and many others."

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