Thomas L. Hughes
Essay
Apr
1972
The world of the 20th century, if it is to come to life in health and vigor, must be an American Century . . . our Century.-Henry Luce, "The American Century," Life, February 17, 1941.
Essay
Jul
1969
In 1770 Edmund Burke, that greatest of late eighteenth-century English conservatives and friend of America, published his famous tract entitled "Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents." Among its opening lines are some which, reread today, carry a contemporaneousness that is as inescapable as it is striking:
Essay
Jul
1967
THE orchestration of foreign policy is a vexatious art form. It exacts its toll from observers and participants alike. After some performances, all involved must yearn to consign the concept to oblivion as simply unworkable. At minimum it is fortunate for the orchestra's reputation that this is a time when dissonance is musically avant garde.
Essay
Jan
1967
According to legend, when Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown in 1781, he sent the British army marching out with colors cased and drums beating to the tune, "The World Turned Upside Down." Repeatedly over the intervening years, as in the preceding centuries, history has harbored those who have turned the world, or whose world has turned, upside down. Some were bent on radically uprooting, others on beneficially preserving, each according to his own lights. Revolutionaries and traditionalists alike frequently find the world behaving contrary to expectations.
