This book brings together international relations scholars, political theorists, and historians to reflect on the intellectual history of American foreign policy since the late nineteenth century. It offers a nuanced and multifaceted collection of essays covering a wide range of concerns, concepts, presidential doctrines, and rationalities of government thought to have marked America's engagement with the world during this period: nation-building, exceptionalism, isolationism, modernisation, race, utopia, technology, war, values, the 'clash of civilisations' and many more.

The collection is organised chronologically and looks at the work of intellectuals who have written both in support and critically about US foreign policy in various geographical and historical contexts. It considers Andrew Carnegie, Carl Schmitt, Hans Morgenthau, George Kennan, Samuel Huntington, Paul Wolfowitz and many other thinkers and practitioners who have contributed in shaping the ways in which we have come to think of US foreign policy over the years.

Contributors to this volume have been selected not simply for their prestige in the field, but also because they come from North America as well as the UK, reflecting distinct academic traditions, political perspectives, and expressive styles. Recent events in America and Europe have highlighted the need for pluralist consideration of the intellectual sources of and influences on US foreign policy, both as it is made from within and understood from without.