After thousands of Poles revolted against Russian rule in January 1863 – a critical moment during the American Civil War – many in the Union faced a moral and ideological dilemma. Should they be faithful to the traditional American sympathy for brave rebels against Old World monarchies? Or should they side with Imperial Russia, which many had long seen as the only friendly power in Europe? The debate in northern newspapers centered less on factual information than on questions of identity. Was autocratic Russia, as it brutally suppressed the Polish Insurrection, a barbaric empire unlike republican America? Or was Russia, like the United States, a Christian power, whose Tsar Alexander II emancipated its serfs shortly before President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation and who suppressed secession much as the North fought the South? Southern editors’ commentary also often revolved around issues of positioning, with sneering parallels drawn between “Alexander II and Abraham I” and analogies made between the struggles of Poland and the Confederacy – thus giving the same comparisons opposite meanings.

This chapter examines the shift from almost total estrangement in the early 1920s to broad enmeshment in cultural, economic, and finally diplomatic exchanges in the early 1930s. While acknowledging the importance of converging economic and strategic interests, the chapter argues that images and ideas were also significant, particularly in defining the identities and trajectories of the two countries. It illuminates the divergence between American anticommunists who loathed the atheist Soviet dictatorship and the growing number of intellectuals, journalists, African Americans, and others who became fascinated by the Soviet experiment in social and economic transformation. It also analyzes the ambivalence of Soviet writers, cartoonists, and political leaders about the United States, which they harshly criticized for its imperialism, racism, and economic exploitation, but also admired for its energy, productivity, and advanced technology. The chapter closes with a discussion of how President Franklin Roosevelt disregarded a terrible famine in Ukraine and protests by Ukrainian Americans as he negotiated for the establishment of diplomatic relations.

Each state has its own direct sales story, but none is richer than the one that played out in Michigan between 2014 and the present. Michigan pitted the power of the Detroit car companies, the United Auto Workers, and the politically active car dealers’ lobby against a California upstart supported by environmentalists, consumer rights organizations, and free market groups. The dealers got the upper hand in 2014 through legislative chicanery involving a single pronoun – “its” – but soon found that word games can backfire. Chapter 6 provides an inside account of the Tesla wars in the author’s own backyard.

This chapter examines the evolution of US–Russian relations from the establishment of diplomatic ties during the Napoleonic Wars through the 1840s, highlighting the complexities shaped by both international and domestic factors. Amid conflicts with France and Britain, American leaders navigated perceptions of the Russian Empire, using Russia as a lens to critique domestic political agendas. The chapter discusses how the early nineteenth-century uprisings, including the Decembrist and Polish rebellions, prompted both nations to evaluate their political ideologies and roles on the global stage, often reflecting mutual fears of foreign intervention. Despite initial goodwill and diplomatic engagement, notably through the 1832 Commercial Treaty and the appointment of Russian minister Bodisco, relations became strained due to the changing political landscape and US concerns over Russian expansionism. Ultimately, the chapter argues that the interplay of shared interests and political ambitions laid the groundwork for a nuanced relationship, illustrating how the two powers sought to navigate their identities and aspirations amid broader international shifts.

This chapter examines the evolution of US–Russia relations from 1901 to the crisis in 1903–1905, when Russia and the United States found themselves in geopolitical conflict in the Far East, the “tariff war” fueled tensions in economic interaction, ideology came to impact official Russia–US relations, and large numbers of Americans mobilized in an anti-Russian campaign following a brutal pogrom (riot) in 1903 in Kishinev. This event, as well as the American “crusade” for a free Russia that peaked during the Russian revolution of 1905–1907, stoked the existing geopolitical and ideological crisis. The chapter demonstrates that the explanation for both the Russian Empire’s and the United States’ ambitions in the Far East can be found in the interaction of their foreign and domestic policies and explores the new frame of mutual perceptions established under conditions of conflict and visualized in political cartoons. During the first crisis both countries’ earlier multiplicities of images of the Other came to be replaced by dichotomous visions of processes across the Atlantic and the desire to use the image of the Other as a “dark twin” for their own political purposes.

This chapter examines the complex evolution of US–Russian relations during the mid-19th century, highlighting a unique period marked by diplomatic engagement and technological collaboration. In the years preceding the American Civil War, both nations experienced mutual support, particularly as Russia backed the Union during the Civil War. While the popular “common foe” narrative attributes this friendship primarily to shared opposition to Great Britain, a more nuanced perspective reveals the significance of diplomatic interactions and technological exchanges in shaping their partnership. Key figures such as Alexander Bodisco and Thomas H. Seymour fostered goodwill, while Russia’s efforts to modernize its military infrastructure through American expertise solidified practical cooperation. The chapter further explores how territorial expansion in the United States aligned with Russia’s ambitions, and how debates over slavery and serfdom prompted comparative reflections on governance. Despite ideological differences, practical needs and mutual interests facilitated rapprochement, culminating in strengthened ties during the Civil War and setting the stage for future interactions.

The ten years between Joseph Stalin’s death and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy brought both dangerous crises and fitful steps toward an easing of superpower tensions. While this chapter describes the confrontations in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Berlin, Cuba, and elsewhere, it also emphasizes four breakthroughs toward coexistence and cooperation: the Geneva summit of 1955; the agreement on cultural exchanges in 1958; Nikita Khrushchev’s tour of the United States in 1959; and the conclusion of a partial test ban treaty in 1963. Such progress was delayed and complicated both by domestic political dynamics and by international rivalries in an era of accelerating decolonization and the fraying of the Sino-Soviet alliance. Yet perhaps most remarkable was how far top political leaders, journalists, scientists, musicians, dancers, and others were able to go to transcend ideological tensions and negative stereotypes through dialogue, negotiation, travel, and cultural exchange.

In Chapter 6, I examine George Schuyler’s 1928 serial “Chocolate Baby: A Story of Ambition, Deception, and Success,” which first appeared in the popular white-owned Black newspaper supplement the Illustrated Feature Section. In “Chocolate Baby,” Schuyler crafts his protagonist Martha Hastings as a sexually assertive version of the New Negro Woman modeled after increasingly popular light-skinned chorus girls. Schuyler, who had married a prominent white woman, depicts his New Negro male protagonist invoking the Mann Act against Martha’s “handsome and crafty” seducer, Gordon Johnson. Also known as the White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910, the Mann Act banned the interstate transportation of women “for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.” Rather than protecting all women regardless of skin color, the Act had been deployed to police consensual relationships between Black men and white women – most famously in the prosecution of boxer Jack Johnson. In a startling reversal of his cautionary tale, Schuyler turns from his warning about the sexual vulnerability and commodification of Black women whose passions hold sway, to arguably the most politically charged issue in the history of race relations, his endorsement of decriminalizing sexual unions between Black men and white women.

Chapter 2 examines Joel Augustus Rogers’ semi-autobiographical debate novel From “Superman” to Man (1917), which features an erudite Pullman porter methodically debunking the anti-Black racist arguments of a Southern senator traveling on his route. Signifying on the pseudoscientific foundations of Jim Crow bigotry, the New Negro porter turns what Eric Lott calls the “black mirror” back on the senator to reveal, ultimately, the utter abjection of white supremacy. Having already “proved” the Negro’s humanity through his erudition, the porter’s explicit reading of a gruesome lynching becomes a catalyst for the senator’s “liminal crucible” moment, a moral transformation great enough that he offers the porter a job in his film studio now devoted to producing some films that “create a better understanding of the Negro.” By examining the revisions Rogers made to his 1917 novel in his 1923 serialization, I reveal Rogers’ increasing anger over the growing brutality and frequency of white mob violence as well as the race-baiting newspapers that fomented it.

Chapter 3 launches into the Tesla wars with an inside account of the first big battle in New Jersey in 2014. It shows how the dealers tried to pivot from the original dealer protection motivation of the state laws to a consumer protection justification and the tactics the dealers used to advance their position. Drawing on public choice theory, the chapter also answers the question of why the dealers have managed to cling onto their protected position for so long, despite business, technological, and political changes that have entirely undermined the original purposes of the franchise dealer laws.

The alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Second World War has often been seen by Americans as at best a temporary necessity to defeat Nazi Germany. In contrast, this chapter emphasizes how much American and Soviet attitudes changed during the war and how many people in both countries came to believe the wartime collaboration would be a foundation for postwar cooperation. While many American politicians, journalists, and historians have downplayed or even forgotten the vital Soviet role in the crushing of German armies, during the war most Americans were keenly aware of the enormous sacrifices made by the Soviet people. By the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in early 1943, mainstream media in the United States lionized not only the Red Army but even Joseph Stalin. The massive US Lend–Lease aid to the USSR was not crucial to the Soviet survival of German offensives in 1941 and 1942, as some have claimed, but it did significantly enhance the Red Army’s mobility and communications, thereby hastening the joint allied victory in Europe by May 1945.

In the early 1980s, relations between the superpowers deteriorated from severely strained to acutely confrontational, and fears of nuclear war gripped people in both countries. Yet by 1989 relations improved so much that most informed observers believed the Cold War was ending. This chapter goes beyond conventional explanations of the transformation that have focused on the policies of President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. It demonstrates that citizen activists also played important roles. In the early 1980s, a very popular nuclear freeze movement compelled the Reagan administration to change its harsh rhetoric and to show greater interest in negotiations with the Soviet Union. Then, large-scale exchanges of Soviet and American citizens, which both Reagan and Gorbachev came to support, challenged demonic stereotypes and humanized the supposed enemies. The chapter also describes how American and Soviet films reflected and contributed to the dramatic changes, from the nightmarish depiction of a communist invasion of the United States in Red Dawn (1984) to the dramatization of a partnership between Soviet and American police officers in Red Heat (1988).

This chapter focuses on the two Russian revolutions in 1917 and US responses to them. The Wilson administration enthusiastically welcomed the overthrow of the tsarist autocracy in March, quickly recognized the new Provisional Government, and extended large loans in the hope that a democratic Russia would stay in the war against Germany. But after radical, antiwar socialists seized power in November, the United States refused to recognize the new Soviet regime, provided covert aid to anti-Bolshevik (“White”) armies, and sent small military expeditions to Archangel and Vladivostok. Contrary to earlier studies, the chapter shows that the United States sought to speed the demise of the Bolshevik regime. US forces fought directly against the Red Army in northern Russia and battled Red partisans in the Far East, while the American Relief Administration, American Red Cross, and Young Men’s Christian Association all aided White armies. Despite the interventions by the United States and its allies, the Bolsheviks prevailed. The legacies of these events included the US rejection of diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia until 1933 and Soviet conceptions of Russia as a “besieged fortress.”

Chapter 1 explores the early relationship between Russia and America, defined by parallel colonial endeavors, development of mutual perceptions, and the beginnings of diplomacy. Initial encounters revealed shared approaches as both nations expanded into challenging territories. Throughout the eighteenth century, economic and cultural exchanges flourished, with Enlightenment ideals shaping Russia’s view of America as a symbol of liberty. Russian radicals saw America as a challenge to their regime, concerning Empress Catherine the Great. Conversely, Americans fluctuated between viewing Russia as despotic and as a potential ally. Russian expansion into the Northwest of the American continent led to competition with American traders, though relations remained relatively peaceful. The formal establishment of diplomatic relations in the early nineteenth century reflected mutual interests during the French revolutionary wars. By 1807, trade and diplomatic ties continued to grow, supported by cautious admiration and strategic alignment. This period laid the groundwork for a complex relationship, marked by ambivalence yet a shared commitment to commerce and diplomacy.