The Contours of American History

William Appleman Williams was one of America’s greatest critics of US imperialism. The Contours of American History, first published in 1961, reached back to seventeenth-century British history to argue that the relationship between liberalism and empire was in effect a grand compromise, with expansion abroad containing class and race tensions at home. Coming as it did before the political explosions of the 1960s, Williams’s message was a deeply heretical one, and yet the Modern Library ultimately chose Contours as one of the best 100 nonfiction books of the 20th Century.

• Author
• William Appleman Williams

• Format
• paperback

• Pages
• 520

• Publisher
• W. W. Norton Company

• Language
• english

• ISBN
• 9780393305616

• Genres
• history, american, politics

• Release date
• 1989