Questions at the Outset

Part One: Recurring Structures

Introduction: The Imperial Arena

1. What Is an Empire?

2. Frontiers

3. "Call It Peace"

Part Two: America's Turn

Introduction: Highland Park and Hiroshima

4. Frontiers and Forces in the Cold War

5. An Empire of Production

6. An Empire of Consumption

Afterword: The Vase of Uruk

Tables

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Charles S. Maier is the Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History at Harvard University, and the author of Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany.

Read More by Charles S. Maier:

• The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity
• The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity, With a new preface