henry luce ww2



He also helped to initiate the Yale-in-China Association. Smith, Tony. Callwell, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice (1896), Cornelius Tacitus, Agricola (circa 98 AD), Henry Kissinger, A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812-1822 (1957), Christine de Pizan, The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry (circa 1410), Bhagavad Gita (3rd Century BC- 3rd Century AD), Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace: A Philosophic Sketch (1795), Jimmy Carter, Commencement Address at Notre Dame University (May 1977).

The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century. But the basic thrust of his argument – the imperative of American global leadership (that of an “indispensable nation”) resonated strongly, especially once the United States entered the war, and it has continued to resonate since. For those journalists, public thinkers, and politicians who had given much thought to the question, it was Luce’s vision of the post-war world, and America’s role in it, that was most intriguing. He wrote campaign speeches for Wendell Willkie, adored Eisenhower, paid lavishly for excerpts from Winston Churchill’s memoirs and was a little dazzled by Kennedy’s Camelot. Brink­ley’s book, written 30 years later, when most of Halberstam’s interview subjects were no longer around, relies instead on voluminous letters and diaries.

Thus, the fear that the United States will be driven to a national socialism, as a result of cataclysmic circumstances and contrary to the free will of the American people, is an entirely justifiable fear. And why not?

After all, if it were necessary to do so Washington could organize the defense of the northern part of the Western Hemisphere so that American territory could never be successfully attacked. Luce’s publications served as a kind of cultural adhesive that bound the middle class to a shared understanding of the world and ushered it through periods of war and economic hardship. Though zealously anti-­Communist, he was scornful of Joseph McCarthy’s excesses. Henry W. Luce graduated from Yale University in 1892. He concedes that the President’s first two terms might be justified on the grounds that “great social reforms were necessary in order to bring democracy up-to-date in the greatest of democracies.”  The fact, however, was that Roosevelt failed to make American democracy work successfully on a narrow, materialistic and nationalistic basis. To complicate matters, there was also something of a divide among internationalists, although this division was not always clear-cut, between those of a realist (power, or geography) and idealist (principles) bent. Her exploits would have supplied abundant copy for the popular magazine that Time Inc. begat after Luce’s death: People.

Henry Winters Luce was an American missionary and educator in China. Whatever else you think of Luce, he never dived down-market. But why an American Century? “Beyond the American Century: Walter Lippmann and American Grand Strategy, 1943-1950.” Diplomacy and Statecraft 22 (2011): 557-577. In “The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century,” Brinkley performs a similar service. We rejected it. Therefore, even if Britain should from time to time announce war aims, the American people are continually in the position of effectively approving or not approving those aims. And is it capable of doing so? The responsibility for taking on such a role is Washington’s and Washington’s alone.
He provides three reasons why the twentieth century was endowed with the ability to be claimed by Americans. “His magazines were mostly reflections of the middle-class world, not often shapers of it,” Brinkley concludes. Each of these aspects reflects America’s unique national experience and capabilities. In total, he spent 31 years in the country, where his four children, including Henry R. Luce, were born. Henry R. Luce, American magazine publisher who built a publishing empire on Time, Fortune, and Life magazines, becoming one of the most powerful figures in the history of American journalism. From the beginning, Luce’s magazines did not shy away from opinion, and Luce labored, not always successfully, to assure that those opinions were his own.