Handbook

Recent presidential elections in the United States highlight gaping rifts in the society and politics of the contemporary United States. Decades of increasing inequality, globalisation and cultural conflict between religious conservatives, libertarians and what Americans call 'liberals' have left American politics and society more divided than it has been for half a century. At the same time, the United States remains the world's greatest power, exercising an enormous say in global governance, from economics to the environment. Focusing particularly on the peculiar 20th-century US histories of class, race, religion and global engagement, you will learn how the world's oldest liberal democracy has become such a vital and fraught force in the contemporary world.