American Thought and Culture in the 21st Century

Will the twenty-first century be the next American Century? Will American power and ideas dominate the globe in the coming years? Or is the prestige of the United States likely to crumble beneath the pressure of new international challenges?This ground-breaking book explores the changing patterns of American thought and culture at the dawn of the new millennium, when the world's richest nation has never been more powerful or more controversial. It brings together some of the most eminent North American and European thinkers to investigate the crucial issues and challenges facing the United States during the early years of our new century.From the subterranean political shifts beneath the electoral landscape to the latest biomedical advances, from the literary response to 9/11 to the rise of reality television, this book explores the political, social and cultural contours of contemporary American life - but it also places the United States within a global narrative of commerce, cultural exchange, international diplomacy, ideological conflict and war. These eighteen new essays address such pressing issues as leadership, foreign policy, propaganda, religion, health, technology, immigration, 9/11 culture and digital media. Searching for the roots of our contemporary concerns, the authors look back to the Clinton years and even earlier periods of twentieth-century American life. But they also look forward to the new horizons of the century to come - to the unanticipated dangers of a global future and to the soaring possibilities of American enterprise and imagination.

Martin Halliwell is Professor of American Thought and Culture at the University of Leicester. His recent books include The Edinburgh Companion to the Politics of American Health (2022) and Transformed States: Medicine, Biotechnology, and American Culture, 1990–2020 (2025). Catherine Morley is Lecturer in American Literature at the University of Leicester. She is the author of The Quest for Epic in Contemporary American Literature (2009) and co-editor of American Thought and Culture in the 21st Century (2008) and American Modernism: Cultural Transactions (2009).