Reasserting America in the 1970S: U.S. Public Diplomacy and the Rebuilding of America's Image Abroad

'Reasserting America in the 1970s' brings together two areas of burgeoning scholarly interest.

On the one hand, scholars are investigating the many ways in which the 1970s constituted a profound era of transition in the international order.

The American defeat in Vietnam, the breakdown of the Bretton Woods exchange system, and a string of domestic setbacks including Watergate, Three-Mile Island, and reversals during the Carter years all contributed to a grand reappraisal of the power and prestige of the United States in the world.

At the same time, within diplomatic history proper, the study of 'public diplomacy' has generated searching reappraisals of many of the field's certitudes.