American Power: Then and Now

The development of American power can be traced back to the Second World War and the extent to which the United States established the necessary state functions to not only defeat Nazi and Japanese forces, but to dominate the postwar era. This event examines the origins of these debates in 1940-1941 and then how the US demonstrated its monopoly over these positions with the explosion of the world’s first atomic bomb in 1945.

Iain MacGregor is a successful editor of non-fiction for major publishing houses, working with talented and bestselling historians such as Michael Wood, Simon Schama, William Taubman, Alice Roberts and John Nichol – as well as publishing tie-ins with archives and podcasts such as the Imperial War Museum and R4’s ‘In  Our Time’ series with Melvyn Bragg. He is also a writer and public speaker on modern history, with pieces in the Guardian, BBC History Magazine, the Spectator and the Washington Post. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He lives with his family in London.

Dr Sean Dettman is a historian, teacher and author of the new book America and the Blitz: The shaping of US Public Opinion and Policy on Great Britain (University of Missouri Press, 2026). He lives in Jersey, Channel Islands with his two children Frankie and Cal and his wife Natasha.