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Knopf
October 2006
On Sale: October 10, 2006
544 pages
ISBN: 0375411054
EAN: 9780375411052
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
From the author of the immensely influential and
best-selling Of Paradise and Power—a major
reevaluation of America’s place in the world from the
colonial era to the turn of the twentieth
century.
Robert Kagan strips away the myth of
America’s isolationist tradition and reveals a more
complicated reality: that Americans have been increasing
their global power and influence steadily for the past four
centuries. Even from the time of the Puritans, he reveals,
America was no shining “city up on a hill” but an engine of
commercial and territorial expansion that drove Native
Americans, as well as French, Spanish, Russian, and
ultimately even British power, from the North American
continent. Even before the birth of the nation, Americans
believed they were destined for global leadership.
Underlying their ambitions, Kagan argues, was a set of ideas
and ideals about the world and human nature. He focuses on
the Declaration of Independence as the document that firmly
established the American conviction that the inalienable
rights of all mankind transcended territorial borders and
blood ties. American nationalism, he shows, was always
internationalist at its core. He also makes a startling
discovery: that the Civil War and the abolition of
slavery—the fulfillment of the ideals of the
Declaration—were the decisive turning point in the history
of American foreign policy as well. Kagan's brilliant and
comprehensive reexamination of early American foreign policy
makes clear why America, from its very beginning, has been
viewed worldwide not only as a wellspring of political,
cultural, and social revolution, but as an ambitious and, at
times, dangerous nation.
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