In American Notes, Rudyard Kipling, the Nobel Prize-winning author of the Jungle Book, visits the USA. As the travel-diary of an Anglo-Indian Imperialist visiting the USA, these American Notes offer an interesting view of America in the 1880s.

Kipling affects a wide-eyed innocence, and expresses astonishment at features of American life that differ from his own, not least the freedom (and attraction) of American women. However, he scorns the political machines that made a mockery of American democracy, and while exhibiting the racist attitudes that made him controversial in the 20th century concludes “It is not good to be a negro in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Will America come to own the twenty-first century? Will its power and ideas dominate the globe? Or will the United States buckle underneath the pressure of new international challenges?

This groundbreaking book looks at changing patterns of American thought and culture at the dawn of the new millennium, a time in which the world's richest nation has never been more powerful or controversial. The volume brings together eminent North American and European thinkers to investigate the crucial issues and challenges facing the United States. From the subterranean political shifts of the electoral landscape to the latest biomedical advances, from the literary response to 9/11 to the rise of reality television, this collection explores the political, social, and cultural contours of contemporary American life. It also places the United States within a global narrative of commerce, cultural exchange, international diplomacy, ideological conflict, and war. These eighteen original essays address leadership, foreign policy, propaganda, religion, health, technology, immigration, 9/11, and digital media. Locating the roots of our contemporary concerns, contributors revisit the Clinton years and even earlier periods of twentieth-century American history, while also looking forward to the potential conflicts of a global future and to the soaring possibilities of American enterprise and imagination.

George Timothy Clooney (born May 6, 1961) is an Academy Award- and Golden Globe-winning American actor, director, producer and screenwriter. Clooney has balanced his glamorous performances in big-budget blockbusters with work as a producer and director behind commercially riskier projects, as well as social and liberal political activism. On January 31, 2008, the United Nations named Clooney a "Messenger of peace".

"And so here they are, dusted, which was but a decent thing to do, but in no way polished, extending from the year ‘98 to the year ‘20, a thin array (for such a stretch of time) of really innocent attitudes: Conrad literary, Conrad political, Conrad reminiscent, Conrad controversial..."

A riveting portrait of President Bush as he broadens the war on terror overseas -- and plunges into high-stakes political battles at home"They misunderestimated me," George W. Bush famously remarked on the eve of his historic presidency. Fractured syntax aside, Bush was right: his detractors misunderstood his appeal to the American public, and underestimated his considerable political skills. In this compelling new book, Bill Sammon reveals how the president is turning these misperceptions to his advantage in the looming showdown with John Kerry and the Bush haters.