Chapter 1: The Dawn of a New Era
Chapter 2: Scholar, Industrialist, Public Servant, 1863–1922
Chapter 3: Confronting Conservative Internationalism, 1922–1923
Chapter 4: Belated Intervention, 1923–1924
Chapter 5: America's Honest Broker, 1925–1926
Chapter 6: America's Ambiguous Internationalism, 1926–1927
Chapter 7: Final Opportunities, 1928–1929
Chapter 8: Epilogue/Conclusion
Bibliographical Essay
Jeffrey J. Matthews is associate professor of cross-disciplinary studies in the School of Business and Leadership at the University of Puget Sound.
Jeffrey Matthews has made an important contribution to the
literature on American foreign policy in the Harding-Coolidge era.
This fine biography, based almost entirely on heretofore
unexploited original sources, traces the career of America's most
influential ambassador to Europe during the New Era. Houghton
served not merely as U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James in
1925–29, he became the leading in-house critic of Secretary
Kellogg's timid involvement in European affairs. All students of
American diplomacy between the wars will want to read this
book.
*Stephen A. Schuker, William W. Corcoran Professor of History,
University of Virginia*
Anyone seeking to understand the complex foundations of American
diplomacy in the modern age will want to read this first biography
of arguably the world's most influential ambassador during the
interwar period. This book is especially compelling when analyzing
Houghton's conclusion that Washington failed to establish a stable
world order in the 1920s because the conservative policies of the
nation's leaders were inadequate to solve postwar problems. Based
on extensive archival research, this lively, well-researched
political biography is balanced yet provocative, and is an
important addition to the history of foreign policy.
*Nancy Unger, Santa Clara University*
Jeffrey Matthews' biography of Alanson B. Houghton fills a
significant gap in the way most of us think about the history of
the United States. It is important not only because it tells us
about one of the most influential diplomats of the 20th century, it
also elucidates in considerable detail a largely forgotten era in
our history. The 1920s are mainly remembered for prohibition, jazz,
flappers, gangsters, and a stock market irrationally exuberant. Not
many Americans would consider the '20s the decade that established
our subsequent role in the world. But it was, and Alanson B.
Houghton, as Matthews brilliantly demonstrates, understood better
than any of his contemporaries what that role had to be. . . . We
can be grateful to Alanson B. Houghton for the way he helped
America begin to deal with the reality of global leadership, and to
Professor Matthews for telling us the story in fascinating and
rewarding detail.
*Arches*
This study is a welcome addition to our understanding of New Era
diplomacy and Houghton's role as prescient critic of that
policy.
*Journal of American History*
Alanson Houghton held two of the most important diplomatic
positions during the 1920s, U.S. ambassador to Weimar Germany and
later Great Britain. His public career provides a unique prism
through which to view America's failed search for a stable European
order in the wake of the Great War. Jeffrey Matthews's new
biography, the first full study of Houghton, is a well-written and
thoroughly researched examination of a diplomat whose warnings
about the weakness of America's engagement in Europe were never
heeded, ultimately with disastrous consequences.
*Thomas Alan Schwartz, Vanderbilt University*
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