Michael Adas

In recent years, my research, writing and teaching have been increasingly concentrated on the history of America’s rise to world hegemony and its ambivalent participation in the process of globalization. My published essays on these themes include "Improving on the Civilising Mission? Assumptions of United States Exceptionalism in the Colonisation of the Philippines," Itinerario, 1998; "In Defense of Engagement: The Social Uses of History in a Time of Intellectual Abdication," in Joep Leerssen and Ann Rigney, eds., Historians and Social Values, 2000; and “From Settler Colony to Global Hegemon: Integrating the Exceptionalist Narrative of the American Experience into Global History,” American Historical Review, 2001. MY most recent books include: Dominance by Design: Technological Imperatives and America’s Civilizing Mission published by Harvard University Press in 2006 (pbk. ed, 2009), and a coauthored book with Joseph Gilch (see accompanying photos) Everyman in Vietnam: A Soldier’s Journey into the Quagmire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). I am is currently working on several book projects, including a comparative study for Harvard University Press on the combat experience of British soldiers on the Western Front in World War I and America GIs in Vietnam. My writings have been translated into seven languages and have won the Dexter, NJ-NEH, and Toynbee Awards.