Cohen, Warren I. 1934–

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Cohen, Warren I. 1934–

PERSONAL:

Born June 20, 1934, in Brooklyn, NY; son of Murray and Fay Cohen; married Janice Prichard, June 22, 1957; children: Geoffrey Scott, Anne Leslie. Education: Columbia University, A.B., 1955; Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, A.M., 1956; University of Washington, Seattle, Ph.D., 1962.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD 21250. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of California, Riverside, lecturer in history, 1962-63; Michigan State University, East Lansing, assistant professor, 1963-67, associate professor, 1967-71, professor of history, beginning 1971; director of Asian Studies Center, beginning 1979; University of Maryland, Baltimore County, distinguished university professor of history; Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC, senior scholar with the Asia Program. Visiting professor, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 1964-66; Fulbright lecturer, Tokyo, Japan, 1969-70. Foreign policy consultant. Military service: U.S. Navy, 1956-59; became lieutenant.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Laura and Norman Graebner Prize, for excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service, from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, 2004.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Intervention, 1917: Why America Fought, Heath (London, England), 1966.

The American Revisionists, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1967.

America's Response to China, Wiley (Indianapolis, IN), 1971, 4th edition, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

The Chinese Connection, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1978.

Dean Rusk, Cooper Square (Lanham, MD), 1980.

(Editor) New Frontiers in American-East Asian Relations, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1983.

(Editor) Reflections on Orientalism, Asian Studies Center, Michigan State University (East Lansing, MI), 1983.

Empire without Tears: America's Foreign Relations, 1921-1933, Temple University Press (Philadelphia, PA), 1987.

(Editor, with Akira Iriye) The United States and Japan in the Postwar World, University Press of Kentucky (Lexington, KY), 1989.

(Editor, with Akira Iriye) American, Chinese, and Japanese Perspectives on Wartime Asia, 1931-1949, SR Books (Wilmington, DE), 1990.

(Editor, with Akira Iriye) The Great Powers in East Asia, 1953-1960, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1990.

East Asian Art and American Culture: A Study in International Relations, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1992.

(Editor) The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, England), 1993, Xin hua chu ban she (Beijing, China), 2004.

(Editor, with Nancy Bernkopf Tucker) Lyndon Johnson Confronts the World: American Foreign Policy, 1963-1968, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, England), 1994.

(Editor and author of introduction) Pacific Passage: The Study of American-East Asian Relations on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1996.

(Editor, with Li Zhao) Hong Kong under Chinese Rule: The Economic and Political Implications of Reversion, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, England), 1997.

East Asia at the Center: Four Thousand Years of Engagement with the World, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

The Asian American Century, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 2002.

America's Failing Empire: U.S. Foreign Relations since the Cold War, Blackwell Pub. (Malden, MA), 2005.

Contributor of articles and reviews to Journal of Asian Studies, Orbis, Journal of American History, and other history and political science journals. Editor, Diplomatic History, 1979-82.

Author's works have been translated into Chinese.

SIDELIGHTS:

Warren I. Cohen is a history professor and an expert in relations between America and Asia. He is also a prolific author, having written or edited over twenty books.

Cohen's expert knowledge of Asia and political relations is evident in his works such as East Asia at the Center: Four Thousand Years of Engagement with the World. Here the author examines Asia's political system and traces modern practices to ancient times. Charles W. Hayford of Library Journal found the book "stimulating and informative."

In addition to his various academic texts, Cohen has also written for a more mainstream audience. East Asian Art and American Culture: A Study in International Relations is a look at how Asian art has come to reside in so many American museums and art collections and the influence it has had on American culture. The author also discusses Asian art as a way to consider political relations between the two countries. Journal of the American Oriental Society reviewer Robert L. Thorp wrote that "Cohen's book has the virtue of taking a longer and wider view," but he also felt that Cohen should have focused more on the art itself and its impact on culture, rather than stories of art collection. Thorp also noted, "The focus on [art collections in] America suggests that the writings and collecting of Europeans had no appreciable impact on American ideas and tastes, surely a misleading interpretation."

In 2002, Cohen took another close look at Asian and American culture with The Asian American Century, based on a series of Cohen's lectures. He examines the American influence on eastern cultures, such as fast food and Disney-type icons, as well as the "Asianization of America." This term refers to Americans' love and fascination with Asian food, art, and religions. Kitty Chen Dean of Library Journal found this book "engrossing" and also noted that she wished it were longer.

America's Failing Empire: U.S. Foreign Relations since the Cold War depicts the United States as a superpower lacking in direction. According to Cohen, there was no doubt as to the power and abilities of the United States as of the end of the Cold War, but over the decade and a half that followed, the nation floundered without a concrete plan as to how to apply their strengths. He addresses primarily issues of foreign policy, which he sees as directionless and often distracted from approximately 1990 onwards. He looks at how each presidential administration handled foreign policy during this period, praising George H.W. Bush and his outlook, but growing steadily harsher in his assessments for Bill Clinton and then George W. Bush, concluding that the safety of America was particularly precarious by the time the younger Bush completed his first term in office. Michael Freeman, reviewing for Perspectives on Political Science, remarked that "the absence of any larger themes or context in Cohen's book simply reflects the author's view that U.S. foreign policy in this time period flitted between crises without any conceptual rudder to guide it."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, December, 1993, Frank Ninkovich, review of East Asian Art and American Culture: A Study in International Relations, p. 1705; February, 1994, Jerald A. Combs, review of The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, p. 178.

Canadian Journal of History, August, 1994, Francis M. Carroll, review of The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, p. 353.

English Historical Review, April, 1994, Bernd Martin, review of American, Chinese, and Japanese Perspectives on Wartime Asia, 1931-1949, p. 529; June, 1995, Callum MacDonald, review of The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, p. 672.

Foreign Affairs, January-February, 1995, David Fromkin, review of Lyndon Johnson Confronts the World: American Foreign Policy, 1963-1968, p. 161; September-October, 1996, Donald Zagoria, review of Pacific Passage: The Study of American-East Asian Relations on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century, p. 158.

Historian, summer, 1995, Lloyd E. Ambrosius, review of The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, p. 789.

History Today, June, 1995, Esmond Wright, review of The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, p. 51.

Journal of American-East Asian Relations, spring, 1994, Robert L. Beisner, review of The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, p. 77.

Journal of American History, June, 1993, Thomas A. Tweed, review of East Asian Art and American Culture, p. 256; December, 1994, Emily S. Rosenberg, review of The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, p. 1260.

Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, March, 1998, N.J. Miners, review of Hong Kong under Chinese Rule: The Economic and Political Implications of Reversion, p. 137.

Journal of Contemporary Asia, January, 1998, Geoffrey C. Gunn, review of Pacific Passage, p. 122; March, 1998, Geoffrey C. Dunn, review of Pacific Passage, p. 122.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, winter, 1995, Anna Kasten Nelson, review of The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, p. 445.

Journal of the American Oriental Society, April-June, 1994, Robert L. Thorp, review of East Asian Art and American Culture, p. 329.

Library Journal, June 15, 1993, Ed Goedeken, review of The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, p. 82; February 1, 2001, Charles W. Hayford, review of East Asia at the Center: Four Thousand Years of Engagement with the World, p. 107; March 1, 2002, Kitty Chen Dean, review of The Asian American Century, p. 124.

Pacific Affairs, fall, 1993, Hsio-Yen Shih, review of East Asian Art and American Culture, p. 469; summer, 1998, Maurice D. Copithorne, review of Hong Kong under Chinese Rule, p. 248.

Pacific Historical Review, August, 1994, Noel H. Pugach, review of East Asian Art and American Culture, p. 455; May, 1997, Norman A. Graebner, review of Lyndon Johnson Confronts the World, p. 293; November, 1997, Michael Schaller, review of Pacific Passage, p. 623.

Perspectives on Political Science, March 22, 2006, Michael Freeman, review of America's Failing Empire: U.S. Foreign Relations since the Cold War, p. 111.

Reviews in American History, December, 1994, H.W. Brands, review of The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, p. 717.