There's a story about the founders. There's a book on isolationism in the 30s, actually many books. There's a book about Woodrow Wilson and the defeat of his effort to bring the country into the United Nations, but nobody kind of did the soup to nuts book. And my purpose was really to bring this history to Americans at a time when I think we all need to know more about the country's foreign policy before Pearl Harbor. I started this book almost a decade ago because I began to sense that there was an inward turn in the United States. It started after the end of the Cold War. I sensed it when I was in the Clinton White House. It was put into abeyance to some extent by 9-11, but then came back in spades once the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan didn't go so well to put it mildly. And I began to wonder, this robust internationalism, this willingness to run the world, this America with almost 800 military bases, is this more fragile than it looks like? And that's really the question that I (3/33)
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