Description
Book SynopsisJust Like Us is a pathbreaking exploration of what foreignness has meant across American history. Thomas Borstelmann traces American ambivalence about non-Americans, identifying a paradoxical perception of foreigners as suspiciously different yet fundamentally sharing American values at heart beneath the layers of culture.
Trade ReviewThis is one of those books that sticks with you. Borstelmann asks a big question—about U.S. attitudes toward foreigners—and has an important argument to make. What is more,
Just Like Us sparkles with telling details and unexpected connections. It is, plainly put, masterful. -- Daniel Immerwahr, author of
How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United StatesThis is a fantastic and timely book, written by one of the nation’s most distinguished scholars of American foreign relations, race, and world history. It is original, lively, beautifully written, accessible, and filled with profound insights that will contribute to the scholarly conversation on American foreign relations and world history. -- Elaine Tyler May, author of
Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War EraFrom one of our finest historians comes this smart, incisive overview of how Americans have viewed other peoples. With wit and insight, Borstelmann shows that Americans’ interaction with foreigners has irrevocably changed them both. The result is a completely fresh perspective on how the United States has engaged with the wider world, on everything from war and foreign policy to immigration and culture. A must-read. -- Andrew Preston, author of
Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and DiplomacyIn this moment of great peril for migrants and refugees in the United States, Borstelmann vividly recovers a necessary history of the place of the “foreigner” in the American imagination. Tracing the ways in which Americans came to understand the world around them in their own exceptionalist image,
Just Like Us brilliantly illustrates how growing sentiments of inclusion and equity emerged against persisting racism and xenophobic fears of subversion to shape the American past and present. -- Mark Philip Bradley, author of
The World Reimagined: Americans and Human Rights in the Twentieth CenturyTable of ContentsPreface
1. The Challenge of Contact with Foreigners
2. Freedom: American Culture as Human Nature
3. Inbound: Immigrants from Internal Threat to Incorporation
4. Lurking: Communists and the Threat of Captivity
5. Outbound: U.S. Expansion Into Foreign Lands
6. Subversion: The Power of American Culture in a Global Era
Conclusion: Not So Foreign After All
Notes
Index
