Maximalist

Description

pp.402.”From a writer with long and high-level experience in the U.S. government, a lively, provocative and eminently readable reexamination of American foreign policy, capturing not only its extraordinary achievements but the diplomatic missteps, intellectual confusion and political discord from which they usually emerge. 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 administration to the next. Why then have so many presidents-even those most admired today-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 administrations have struggled to find new solutions, alternating between bold “maximalist” strategies and retrenchment efforts to downsize America’s role. Almost all our presidents-and all their most important decisions, from defeat in Vietnam through victory in the Cold War to today’s new challenges, emerge from this vivid retelling in a sharp and unexpected light.

Key Features:

• Human History: Sestanovich captures the human scale of high-stakes presidential decisions in a way that is accessible to a nonexpert reader. He challenges conventional wisdom about American foreign policy over the entire period of U.S. global dominance, emphasizing the disagreements, reversals and uncertainty that define the record of every administration.
• Author Profile: Stephen Sestanovich has been in and out of government since the 1980s, serving at a high level in both the Reagan and Clinton administrations. He is well known and widely respected across the political spectrum in Washington and in foreign policy circles. This is his first trade book and it will be highly anticipated.
• Audience: A book for people who want to understand how presidents and their advisers have shaped America’s global role-the kind of people who read David Sanger or James Mann to understand the politics and personalities behind our biggest successes and most colossal failures. For anyone who loved The Wise Men or Bob Woodward’s series on George W. Bush’s wars.”