ABSTRACT
The story of the American Century is the epic of a nation in a state of constant expansion. The nation’s population grew rapidly, spurred on by high domestic fertility and high foreign immigration. Its output multiplied miraculously, propelled by expanding population, Yankee ingenuity, domestic demand, and the Protestant work ethic. America’s urban population proliferated so rapidly that by the third decade of the century there were more people living in cities than on the soil. Its sense of self-importance was inflated with its victory over Spain, its role in the Russo-Japanese war, its acquisition of Hawaii and the Philippines, its forcing the door open in China. The nation’s aspirations lifted it out of its traditional isolation and turned its eyes to a future where the American presence would be felt everywhere in the world. America was developing the mind and the muscle to make the twentieth century its very own.
