The American Century

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how legitimate it is to call the 20th century the American century. Just how benevolent has America’s impact on the world been? And how durable has American’s initial idealism proved to be? Have ideals of democracy and freedom been forged across the globe as a result of the American influence, or has American oppression made the bigger impact? Has America ignored its own inequalities whilst advocating democratic capitalism elsewhere? Can America still lay claim to the idealism which fired its founders, or has materialism, with its uncomfortable corollary deprivation, lain waste to those early ideals?

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Harry Evans No other episodes
  Former editor of The Sunday Times
• John Lloyd No other episodes
  Associate editor of The New Statesman and former Times correspondent in Moscow and East European Editor of the Financial Times

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Programme ID: p0054594

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0054594

Auto-category: 327.73 (International relations—United States)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello, what does it mean to call this century the American century?