America Imagined

Download or read online book entitled America Imagined written by Axel Körner and published by Springer. This book was released on 16 August 2012 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Get best books that you want by click Get Book Button and Read as many books as you like. Book Excerpt : Why has "America" - that is, the United States of America - become so much more than simply a place in the imagination of so many people around the world? In both Europe and Latin America, the United States has often been a site of multiple possible futures, a screen onto which could be projected utopian dreams and dystopian nightmares. Whether castigated as a threat to civilized order or championed as a promise of earthly paradise, America has invariably been treated as a cipher for modernity. It has functioned as an inescapable reference point for both European and Latin American societies, not only as a model of social and political organization - one to reject as much one to emulate - but also as the prime example of a society emerging from a dramatic diversity of cultural and social backgrounds.