The Pan American

From the award-winning author of American Canopy, a dazzling account of the world’s longest road, the Pan-American Highway, and the epic quest to link North and South America, a dramatic story of commerce, technology, politics, and the divergent fates of the Americas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Pan-American Highway, monument to a century’s worth of diplomacy and investment, education and engineering, scandal and sweat, is the longest road in the world, passable everywhere save the mythic Darien Gap that straddles Panama and Colombia. The highway’s history, however, has long remained a mystery, a story scattered among government archives, private papers, and fading memories. In contrast to the Panama Canal and its vast literature, the Pan-American Highway—the United States’ other great twentieth-century hemispheric infrastructure project—has become an orphan of the past, effectively erased from the story of the “American Century.” The Longest Line on the Map uncovers this incredible tale for the first time and weaves it into a tapestry that fascinates, informs, and delights. Rutkow’s narrative forces the reader to take seriously the question: Why couldn’t the Americas have become a single region that “is” and not two near irreconcilable halves that “are”? Whether you’re fascinated by the history of the Americas, or you’ve dreamed of driving around the globe, or you simply love world records and the stories behind them, The Longest Line on the Map is a riveting narrative, a lost epic of hemispheric scale.

In the history of the early twentieth-century Americas, visions of hemispheric unity flourished, and the notion of a transnational American identity was embraced by artists, intellectuals, and government institutions. In The Pan American Imagination, Stephen Park explores the work of several Pan American modernists who challenged the body of knowledge being produced about Latin America, crossing the disciplinary boundaries of academia as well as the formal boundaries of artistic expression—from literary texts and travel writing to photography, painting, and dance. Park invests in an interdisciplinary approach, which he frames as a politically resistant intellectual practice, using it not only to examine the historical phenomenon of Pan Americanism but also to explore the implications for current transnational scholarship.

"Illustrated with rare period photographs, vintage travel posters, magazine ads and colorful company brochures, Pan American Clippers covers every aspect of the era of flying boats, from 1931-1946. Trautman explains PanAm's founding and growth, their wartime activities, and the design choices that made the company a symbol of luxury. "--

The initiative of Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton to forge a Western Hemisphere community has been staggered by Mexico's economic and political crisis. Is this latest grand design for the hemisphere destined to follow John Kennedy's Alliance for Progress and Franklin Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy into the cemetery of frustrated Pan-American dreams? The United States and Canada are prosperous first-world countries with centuries-old democratic institutions; Latin America's countries are poor and, in most cases, experimenting with democratic capitalism for the first time. Can a coherent, durable community like the European Union be constructed with building blocks so different?Why are the United States and Canada so much more prosperous, so much more democratic than is Latin America? Why has it taken so long for Latin America to conclude that democratic capitalism and good relations with the United States are in its best interest? And what might be done to enhance the prospects for a dynamic community in the Western Hemisphere?These are the questions Lawrence Harrison addresses in The Pan-American Dream. Central to the contrasts between Latin America and the United States and Canada are the fundamental differences between the Ibero-Catholic and Anglo-Protestant cultures, reflected in contrasting views of work, education, merit, community, ethics, and authority, among others. But, as he stresses, cultural values and attitudes change, and Pan-Americanism can be more than a dream.A Pan-American community depends on shared values and institutions, as the community now embracing the United States and Canada demonstrates. Experiments with democracy and the free market in Latin America will help strengthen the values that lie behind the success of the United States and Canada, Western Europe, and East Asia. But if Latin America's political and intellectual leaders do not confront the traditional values and attitudes largely responsible for the region's underdevelopment?with sweeping reforms in education and child-rearing practices, for example?realization of the Pan-American dream will be painfully slow and uncertain.

The Pan-American Games, begun officially in 1951 in Buenos Aires and held in every region of the western hemisphere, have become one of the largest multi-sport games in the world. 6,132 athletes from 41 countries competed in 48 sports in the 2015 Games in Toronto, Canada. The Games are simultaneously an avenue for the spread of the Olympic Movement across the Americas, a stage for competing ideologies of Pan-American unity, and an occasion for host city infrastructural stimulus and economic development. And yet until this volume, the Games have never been studied as a single entity from a scholarly viewpoint. Historicizing the Pan-American Games presents 12 original articles on the Games. Topics range from the origins of the Games in the period between the world wars, to their urban, hemispheric and cultural legacies, to the policy implications of specific Games for international sport. The entire collection is set against the shifting economic, social, political, cultural, sporting and artistic contexts of the turbulent western hemisphere. Historicizing the Pan-American Games makes a significant contribution to the literature on major games, Olympic sport and sport in the western hemisphere. This book was previously published as a special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport.

Traces the history of Argentine and Chilean pan-Americanism and asks why pan-Americanism came to define inter-American relations in the twentieth century. The Southern Cone and the Origins of Pan America, 1888-1933 offers new perspectives on the origins of the inter-American system and the history of international cooperation in the Americas. Mark J. Petersen chronicles the story of pan-Americanism, a form of regionalism launched by the United States in the 1880s and long associated with U.S. imperial pretensions in the Western hemisphere. The story begins and ends in the Río de la Plata, with Southern Cone actors and Southern Cone agendas at the fore. Incorporating multiple strands of pan-American history, Petersen draws inspiration from interdisciplinary analysis of recent regionalisms and weaves together research from archives in Argentina, Chile, the United States, and Uruguay. The result is a nuanced and comprehensive account of how Southern Cone policy makers used pan-American cooperation as a vehicle for various agendas--personal, national, regional, hemispheric, and global--transforming pan-Americanism from a tool of U.S. interests to a framework for multilateral cooperation that persists to this day. Petersen decenters the story of pan-Americanism and orients the conversation on pan-Americanism toward a more complete understanding of hemispheric cooperation. The book will appeal to students and scholars of inter-American relations, Latin American (especially Chile and Argentina) and U.S. history, Latin American studies, and international relations.

Searching for even more wild places and new experiences, Dan became determined to explore 'off the map' in Africa. From the mighty Sahara Desert in the north to the dense equatorial jungles of the Congo and the open grasslands of Southern Africa, Dan turned his biggest dream into reality. Over the course of three years Dan's second major expedition spanned fifty-four thousand miles through thirty-five unique African countries. THE ADVENTURE WAS A THOUSAND TIMES BIGGER THAN HE DREAMED POSSIBLE. After exploring the Pan-American Highway from Alaska to Argentina Dan became hooked on the freedom of global overland travel, and he only wanted more. New languages, exotic foods, stunning landscapes and local people with an entirely different outlook became Dan's everyday life. As the months turned into years, through highlights and despair Dan gained a new appreciation for what it truly means to be alive. Viewing our modern world through African eyes gave Dan a new perspective, and he was pulled in by the endless joy, laughter and kindness at every turn. While the landscapes and wildlife are undeniably breathtaking, it is the natural warmth of the African people that is truly unforgettable. All across the continent Dan was welcomed with love and generosity, and now he will never be the same.