Maximalist: America in the World from Truman to Obama

American foreign policy since World War II has long been seen primarily as a story of strong and successful alliances, domestic consensus, and continuity from one adminstration to the next. Why then have so many presidents left office condemned for their foreign policy record?

In his fresh and compelling history of America's rise to dominance, Stephen Sestanovich makes clear that U.S. diplomacy has always stirred controversy, both at home and abroad. He shows how successive adminstrations have struggled to find new solutions, alternating between bold "maximalist" strategies and retrenchment efforts to downsize America's role. Almost all our presidents emerge from this vivid retelling in a sharp and unexpected light.

• American Diplomacy: Sixtieth-Anniversary Expanded Edition (Walgreen Foundation Lectures)
• American Exceptionalism: An Experiment in History (Values and Capitalism)
• Superpower: Three Choices for America's Role in the World
• Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War
• Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World
• The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad 1750 to the Present (2 Volumes in 1)
• Superpower: Three Choices for America's Role in the World
• All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the Twenty-First Century and the Future of American Power
• From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776 (Oxford History of the United States)
• Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era (The Richard Ullman Lectures)