THE AMERICAN EMPIRE PROJECT:
americanempireproject.com
The American Empire Project
Americans have long believed that the very notion of empire is an offense against our democratic heritage, yet in recent months, these two words -- American empire -- have been on everyone's lips. At this moment of unprecedented economic and military strength, the leaders of the United States have embraced imperial ambitions openly. How did we get to this point? And what lies down the road?
To address these questions, Metropolitan Books is launching the American Empire Project. In these short, argument-driven books, our leading writers and thinkers will mount an immodest challenge to the fateful exercise of empire-building and to explore every facet of the developing American imperium, while suggesting alternate ways of thinking about, confronting, and acting in a new American century.
The project is being developed by Tom Engelhardt and Steve Fraser, two editors with long and distinguished careers in publishing -- at Pantheon and Basic Books -- who are themselves historians and writers. In future seasons, Chalmers Johnson, who made "blowback" a household word, will take on the far reach of American militarism and what it means to garrison the planet in The Sorrows of Empire. Michael Klare will ask, in Blood and Oil, how American dependency on petroleum drives our strategic planning. And in How to Succeed at Globalization: A Primer for the Roadside Vendor, Mexican cartoonist Rafeal Barajas will depict the world economy from the perspective of the very small businessman.
We are proud to inaugurate the project with Hegemony or Survival, a new book by Noam Chomsky, which is a landmark assessment of the implications and risks of America's quest for global dominance. |
