American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers

Like everything Anderson writes, American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers deserves careful reading. He's one of the world's great historians, unrivalled in his ability to master and synthesize vast historical literatures (often drawing on many languages). - Jeet Heer, The New Republic The most interesting implication of Anderson's argument is that the long catalog of US foreign policy disasters-the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, the twin quagmires of Vietnam and Iraq-were more than just errors of presidential judgement. They were the price America recurrently pays for the hubristic embrace of a messianic foreign policy, one that never disciplined its priorities according to rationally defined national interests. - New York Review of Books His writing is sharp and erudite and even those who do not share his politics will learn from his book. - Gideon Rachman (picked for Summer Books 2015), Financial Times Revives memories of the early-1960s vintage, anti-Wilsonian idealism classic, William Appleman Williams's The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. - Joe P. Dunn, Choice Anderson is among the most insightful and policy-relevant analysts of modern Europe. - Andrew Moravcsik, Foreign Affairs One of the best political, historical and literary essayists of the age. - Times Literary Supplement A powerful and lucid intelligence. - Eric Hobsbawm The most polymathic, and the most profound, essayist currently wielding a pen. - Christopher Hitchens One of the acutest and most unsparing analysts of twentieth-century social and political thought. - Stefan Collini Anderson surveys the views of some of the most prominent mainstream American foreign policy intellectuals and finds them not only unconvincing but also incoherent. - Eric Alterman, The Nation