The Shock of America: Europe and the Challenge of the Century

Oxford University Press ^ | 2012 | David Ellwood

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The Shock of America is based on the proposition that whenever Europeans of the last 100 years or more contemplated those margins of their experience where change occurred, there, sooner or later, they would find America. How Europeans have come to terms over the decades with this dynamic force in their midst, and what these terms were, is the story at the heart of this text. Masses of Europeans have been enthralled by the real or imaginary prospects coming out of the USA. Inspiration, provocation, myth, menace, model: all these categories and many more have been deployed to try to cope with the Americans.

Attitudes and stereotypes have emerged, intellectual resources have been mobilised, positions and policies developed; all trying to explain and deal with the kind of radiant modernity America built over the course of the twentieth century.

* Provides an exceptionally wide-ranging survey of Europe's responses to the challenge of America's capacity for world-stirring innovation, including politics, economics, and popular culture.

* A unique contribution to European and wider debates about 'Americanization' and 'anti-Americanism'

"Ellwood's interpretation of American culture's vigor and innovation as a self-renovating soft power since World War II is consistently interesting."- The Journal of American History

"This is a book that will be of great interest to anyone who has been grappling with one of the most intriguing problems of the twentieth century." - Diplomatic History

"This is a central text for anyone who seeks to study Europe's fractured relationship with modernity or to understand the relationship between America and Western Europe in the modern world...Its scope is massive, resting on the analysis of hundreds of scholarly works in at least four languages and drawing from substantial, wide-ranging, original research." - American Historical Review

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