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This book presents the writings of Hugh S. Gibson, who served from 1919 to 1924 as the first US Minister to the new Second Polish Republic. Crucially involved with world-shaping events, Gibson faithfully recorded his eyewitness impressions and interactions with the nascent Polish state, bickering Allies, and increasingly isolationist Americans. The selected material draws from both State Department dispatches and personal letters, most of it appearing in print for the first time. Editor Vivian Hux Reed, working with experts M. B. B. Biskupski, Jochen Boehler, and Jan-Roman Potocki, provides historical context through a comprehensive introduction and series of annotations. Reminiscences by Gibson's late son Michael Francis Gibson provide personal context. With a flair for pertinent analysis, Gibson records the rocky first years of Polish statehood. He advocated for American support of the young democracy and emphasized to both Polish and US government officials the need for a strong state to protect the rights of all Polish citizens. His words are prophetic, accurately assessing the need for strong state structures to protect all citizens and predicting the danger posed especially to minority groups should such structures fail. VIVIAN HUX REED has an MA in history from Western Oregon University. M. B. B. BISKUPSKI is professor of history, Central Connectictut State University. JOCHEN BOEHLER is a research associate, Imre Kertesz Kolleg Jena at Friedrich Schiller University. JAN-ROMAN POTOCKI has an MPhil in International Relations from Cambridge University.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Introduction
• By benefit of clergy : authoritative political vocabularies
• Witnessing politics : the depictive element of political vocabularies
• Revelations : naturalizing hierarchies in political vocabularies
• The American Eden : mythic elements of political vocabularies
• Making a city on a hill : political vocabularies and national policy.

Uses a set of letters sent to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 by American clergymen to make a larger argument about the rhetorical processes of our national politics. At any given moment, national politics are constituted by competing political imaginaries, through which citizens understand and participate in politics. Different imaginaries locate political authority in different places, and so political authority is very much a site of dispute between differing political vocabularies. Opposing political vocabularies are grounded in opposing characterizations of the specific political moment, its central issues, and its citizens, for we cannot imagine a political community without populating it and giving it purpose. These issues and people are hierarchically ordered, which provides the imaginary with a sense of internal cohesion and which also is a central point of disputation between competing vocabularies in a specific epoch. Each vocabulary is grounded in a political tradition, read through our national myths, which authorize the visions of national identity and purpose and which contain significant deliberative aspects, for each vision of the nation impels distinct political imperatives. Such imaginaries are our political priorities in action. Taking one specific moment of political change, the author illuminates the larger processes of change, competition, and stability in national politics.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)