The central argument of my book is that Dutch policymakers and politicians were able to render American power into solutions for often-intractable domestic and foreign policy challenges. American power after World War II offered its allies policy choices that they would not have had otherwise. In this excerpt from my book, I survey the nature of the Dutch German problem after the war, and hint at how American economic aid and military support coalesced in The Hague to provide a way out of the conundrum.

​I posted the other day about how writers might refocus their point of concern. Rather than fret about getting published, we might focus on perfecting the story. What drives that observation, in part, is the fact that it’s never been easier to get published. To publish means, literally, to make your work public (or at least publicly available), and there are many routes to that end these days. Some don’t even involve publishing at all, at least in the conventional meaning of “printing.” Social media, video channels, and even old-fashioned blogs like this one all provide you with means to get your work in front of readers. So if readers are the goal, then there’s no reason to sweat being published. As I noted earlier, if wealth and fame are the goal, there are easier ways to achieve those ends than through the pain of writing.
 
For writers that DO want to get their work into print, there are three primary ways to achieve this, as I detail after the break:

Novice authors may not be fully aware of what it takes to transform a finished manuscript into an actual, physical book. Misunderstanding creates space for scammers and con artists to exploit gullible writers of good faith, and there’s quite enough of that around these days. Misunderstanding also creates room for doubt and discouragement to grow, and we have even more of that in the world than we need. In the hopes of encouraging more first-time writers to pursue book writing and publication, here is a brief overview of what publishing your book looks like. (Note here I am focused on what we call “traditional” publishing. I am working on a following post that will help explain publication possibilities in the new age of hybrid and self-publishing.):

Facebook "Memories" function reminded me today that we lost Dad about six years ago. I posted the following thoughts a couple weeks after he passed. Some of this still moves me, so I share it with readers today. Regular writing, history, and book posting will resume tomorrow:

​When I started my research into Dutch-American relations more than two decades ago, I was at the time aware that I was engaged in a very niche topic. My focus was what scholars called “Americanization,” an approach that even then was beginning to fade into the twilight. The issue for me was to ask what the vast imbalances of power between the USA and the Netherlands meant for the smaller partner. How did American influence work? How did it get its own way? Were there situations in which it could be resisted? Was American power always a form of international bullying? Or could it be benign? I found answers to those questions, and present them in my book. What I didn’t expect then, and still don’t understand now, was how my little niche topic would suddenly become one of the paramount topics of concern in the third decade of the century.

I’ve come to believe that many authors, especially the less experienced and novices among us, are focused on the wrong problem. They’re trying to achieve something, but what they want to achieve does not align with what they can do or what they can control. For example:

Some years before American economic and cultural power began to penetrate the Netherlands, Dutch officials sought greater influence within the United States with a dedicated wartime public diplomacy outreach. The Netherlands Information Bureau (NIB), established in 1941, not quite a year after the Nazi invasion of Holland, sought to win greater American sympathies for the besieged country, and at least deflect US criticism, if not win direct American support. In this brief excerpt from my forthcoming book I show how American power in the Netherlands had its origins with Dutch power in the U.S.:

Managing the image of America that foreign observers held became increasingly fraught over the course of the twentieth century as American overseas interests and activities multiplied. To advance those interests abroad, Congress authorized, and successive administrations built, intensified propaganda agencies to spread the new American gospel. The State Department, the Marshall Plan, the CIA, and soon enough a new independent agency, the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), blanketed foreign audiences with performances, exhibits, lectures, film, radio, pamphlets, and much more. Scholars call this effort "public diplomacy," though a fair amount of it was covertly funded and produced. In this excerpt from my forthcoming book, I place this "public diplomacy" in the context of the American mass culture that necessitated it, and against which it often battled.

Socialism has been much in the American news of late. The historical and political abuse heaped on the word has been in no way reduced by its prevalence. One day I aim to write a primer on the history of socialism for confused American readers. For now, after the break, an excerpt from my forthcoming book about the postwar evolution of Dutch socialism which may offer some useful perspective.