Start gifting
Libro.fm for Business
Start a membership, get two free audiobooks
Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create account
Limited-time offer
Get two free audiobooks!
Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.
Sign up today
Gift audiobook credit bundles
You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and your local bookstore is supported by your purchase.
Start giftingIn the Shadows of the American Century
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreIn a completely original analysis, prizewinning historian Alfred W. McCoy explores America’s rise as a world power—from the 1890s through the Cold War—and its bid to extend its hegemony deep into the twenty-first century through a fusion of cyberwar, space warfare, trade pacts, and military alliances. McCoy then analyzes the marquee instruments of US hegemony—covert intervention, client elites, psychological torture, and worldwide surveillance.
Peeling back layers of secrecy, McCoy exposes a military and economic battle for global domination fought in the shadows, largely unknown to those outside the highest rungs of power. Can the United States extend the “American Century” or will China guide the globe for the next hundred years? McCoy devotes his final chapter to these questions, boldly laying out a series of scenarios that could lead to the end of Washington’s world domination by 2030.
Alfred W. McCoy is the author of several nonfiction books, including In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power. He is also the author of Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State, which won the Kahin Prize from the Association for Asian Studies. His best-known book, The Politics of Heroin, stirred controversy when the CIA tried to block its publication in 1972, but it has remained in print for nearly fifty years, has been translated into nine languages, and is generally regarded as the “classic” work on global drug trafficking. He holds the Harrington chair of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he teaches classes on the Vietnam War, modern empires, and US foreign policy.
Arthur Morey has recorded countless audiobooks, including titles by such authors as M. Scott Peck, John Updike, Richard Russo, Anne Tyler, and John Irving. He attended Harvard and the University of Chicago and has taught performance and writing at Fordham, Northwestern, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Arthur has appeared in a host of off-Broadway and off-Loop productions. He has won three AudioFile Magazine 'Best Of' Awards: in 2011 for BIOGRAPHY & HISTORY, in for History & Historical Fiction, and in 2009 for Nonfiction & Culture. His work has also garnered multiple AudioFile Earphones awards, and he has been nominated for an Audie Award.
Reviews
“Narrator Arthur Morey’s voice has a ring of knowledgeable world-weariness as he provides listeners a history of US hegemony…Delving deeply into our military infrastructure in land, sea, space, and cyberspace, Morey relates McCoy’s critical assessments with equal clarity and intelligence, taking listeners through US strengths and its policy failures. Harrowing but important listening.”
“This provocative study…is history with profound relevance to events that are unfolding before our eyes.”
“McCoy’s detailed, panoramic analysis of the past, present, and future of the American empire covers all spheres of activity…and seasons all of this with some fascinating personal vignettes.”
"The case that Alfred McCoy makes—that much of America’s decline is due to its own contradictions and failures—is a sad one. He provides a glimmer of hope that America can ease into the role of a more generous, more collaborative, if less powerful, world player.”
“Provides an autopsy on a dying empire….Scenarios relayed by McCoy in dark terms could in turn provide positive opportunities for societal change as the necessity for constant war is removed.”
“[A] brilliant and deeply informed must-read for anyone seriously interested in geopolitics, the history of Empire, and the shape of the future.”
“Sobering reading for geopolitics mavens and Risk aficionados alike.”
“A meticulous, eye-opening account of the rise, since 1945, and impending premature demise of the American Century of world domination.”
Expand reviews