Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York, 1979), remains the most useful introduction to FDR’s thoughts on world affairs. The quest for a liberal international economic order can be followed from the 1920s through the 1940s in Michael J. Hogan, The Marshall Plan (Cambridge, 1990). Richard N. Gardner, Sterling-Dollar Diplomacy, expanded edition (New York, 1969), and Alfred E. Eckes, A Search for Solvency (Austin, Tex., 1975), are important to an understanding of the Bretton Woods agreements. The British perspective is most accessible in the relevant chapters of Roy F. Harrod, The Life of John Maynard Keynes (New York, 1951). Gabriel Kolko, Politics of War (New York, 1968), offers the least flattering evaluation of American ends leading up to Bretton Woods.

John Lewis Gaddis’s classic United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947 (New York, 1972), captures Roosevelt’s sinuous path toward the goal of maintaining the Grand Alliance after the war. Herbert Feis, The China Tangle (Princeton, 1953), is still the best introduction to American problems with wartime China. See also Michael Schaller, The U.S. Crusade in China, 1938–1945 (New York, 1979). The most balanced account of Chiang Kai-shek’s wartime diplomacy is John W. Garver, Chinese-Soviet Relations, 1937–1945 (New York, 1988). Two very different efforts to read Stalin’s mind are William O. McCagg, Jr., Stalin Embattled, 1943–1945 (Detroit, 1978), and William Taubman, Stalin’s American Policy (New York, 1982). Gar Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam, expanded and updated edition (New York, 1985), is the best-known indictment of Truman’s use of the atomic bomb against Japan, but see J. Samuel Walker, “The Decision to Use the Bomb: An Historiographical Update,” Diplomatic History 14 (1990): 97–114. Roosevelt’s decisions on whom to share the bomb’s secrets with and whom to withhold them from can be followed in Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed (New York, 1975). Two excellent volumes on the subsequent importance of nuclear weapons are Gregg Herken, The Winning Weapon (New York, 1980), and Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution (Ithaca, 1989).

The American domestic context is portrayed vividly in Eric Goldman, The Crucial Decade – and After, 1945–1960 (New York, 1960), and with more concern for women and minorities in William Chafe, The Unfinished Journey (New York, 1986). H. Bradford Westerfield, Foreign Policy and Party Politics (New Haven, 1955), remains the best account of how partisan politics contributed to the shaping of the Soviet-American relationship. The single most important study of Truman’s foreign policy is Melvyn Leffler’s magisterial A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, 1992). Deborah Welch Larson, Origins of Containment (Princeton, 1985), provides a fascinating psychological study of how the policy toward the Soviet Union developed. Foreign economic policy is traced by Robert A. Pollard in Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War, 1945–1950 (New York, 1985). Richard M. Freeland argues persuasively the relationship between The Truman Doctrine and the Origins of McCarthyism (New York, 1972). Joyce and Gabriel Kolko offer a densely written but otherwise engaging Marxist analysis in their Limits of Power (New York, 1972). Joseph M. Jones, The Fifteen Weeks (New York, 1955), is the standard work on the evolution of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan by a participant.

The Wise Men (New York, 1986), by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, is a highly readable examination of the thought and interactions of six major policymakers, but Dean Acheson’s own Present at the Creation (New York, 1969) is still essential. There are too many books about George Kennan, whose own elegant writing and occasional profundities have led historians to exaggerate his importance. See, for example, Walter L. Hixson, George F. Kennan: Cold War Iconoclast (New York, 1989), and Anders Stephanson, Kennan and the Art of Foreign Policy (Cambridge, Mass., 1989). The most recent is John Lewis Gaddis’ monumental George F. Kennan: An American Life (New York, 2012).

Lawrence Kaplan’s NATO and the United States (Boston, 1988) is particularly helpful on the origins of NATO. European perceptions and activities are best explored with Geir Lundestad, “Empire by Invitation? The United States and Western Europe, 1945–1952,” Journal of Peace Research 23 (1986): 263–77. See also Alan S. Milward, The Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1945–1951 (Berkeley, 1984), and Anton W. dePorte, Europe Between the Superpowers, 2d ed. (New Haven, 1986). Wolfram F. Hanrieder, Germany, America, Europe: Forty Years of German Foreign Policy (New Haven, 1989), offers a wealth of information and insights for the entire postwar period. Marshall D. Shulman, Stalin’s Foreign Policy Reappraised (New York, 1966), suggests Stalin was seeking to retreat from confrontation on the eve of the Korean War. Valuable insights into policies of the Soviet leader can be found in Vladislav Zubock and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, Mass., 1996), and Zubock’s A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill, 2007).

Marc S. Gallicchio, The Cold War Begins in Asia (New York, 1988), looks at American fears of Soviet influence in East Asia in 1945. See also his The Scramble for Asia: U.S. Military Power in the Aftermath of the Pacific War (Lanham, Md., 2008), which portrays the aspirations of some American leaders. Steven I. Levine, Anvil of Victory (New York, 1987), explains the American response to Communist successes in Manchuria in 1946. The major works on relations with China are Dorothy Borg and Waldo Heinrichs, Uncertain Years: Chinese-American Relations, 1947–1950 (New York, 1980), and Nancy B. Tucker, Patterns in the Dust (New York, 1983). See also Robert J. McMahon, “The Cold War in Asia: Toward a New Synthesis,” Diplomatic History 12 (1988): 307–27, for a superb overview, especially of work at variance with the prevailing Tucker-Cohen thesis. For Japan, see Michael Schaller’s The American Occupation of Japan (New York, 1985), John Dower’s Empire and Aftermath (Cambridge, 1979), Embracing Defeat (New York, 1999), and Carol Gluck’s discussion of the issues and literature, “Entangling Illusions – Japanese and American Views of the Occupation,” in Warren I. Cohen, ed., New Frontiers in American–East Asian Relations (New York, 1983), 169–236. The early American involvement in Southeast Asia is most accessible in Gary Hess, The United States’ Emergence as a Southeast Asian Power, 1940–1950(New York, 1987). See also Robert J. McMahon, Colonialism and the Cold War: The United States and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence, 1945–1949 (Ithaca, 1981), on Indonesia.

Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1981, 1990), is essential reading for the serious student of the war. James Matray, The Reluctant Crusade (Honolulu, 1985), and Burton I. Kaufman, The Korean War (New York, 1986), are more accessible. William Stueck, The Korean War: An International History (Princeton, 1995), is the broadest, most inclusive study to date. Rosemary Foot, The Wrong War (Ithaca, 1985), and A Substitute for Victory (Ithaca, 1990), are major contributions to understanding American strategy during the war and in the peace negotiations. Allen S. Whiting’s classic China Crosses the Yalu (Stanford, 1960) should be supplemented by Zhang Shuguang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture (Ithaca, 1993), which relies heavily on recently released cables exchanged between Mao and Stalin. Sergei N. Goncharev, John W. Lewis, and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War (Stanford, 1993), Chen Jian, China’s Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation (New York, 1994), and Zubock’s Failed Empire provide essential insights into Soviet and Chinese decision making.

Three important articles are Okonogi Masao, “The Domestic Roots of the Korean War,” in Akira Iriye and Nagai Yonosuke, eds., The Origins of the Cold War in Asia (New York, 1977), 299–320; James I. Matray, “Truman’s Plan for Victory: National Self-Determination and the Thirty-Eighth Parallel Decision in Korea,” Journal of American History 66 (1979): 314–33; and Robert Jervis, “The Impact of the Korean War,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 24 (1980): 563–92.

Eisenhower “revisionism” was a growth industry for historians in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as archival material for the 1950s was declassified. Richard A. Melanson and David Mayers, eds., Reevaluating Eisenhower (Urbana, Ill., 1987), is a convenient place to start. Ronald W. Preussen, John Foster Dulles (New York, 1982), is the best of the current biographies. Richard H. Immerman, ed., John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War (Princeton, 1990), contains a number of superb essays. Immerman’s own book, The CIA in Guatemala (Austin, Tex., 1982), is a very good account of how Eisenhower got things done, as is Fred I. Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency (New York, 1982). Burton I. Kaufman, Trade and Aid: Eisenhower’s Foreign Economic Policy (Baltimore, 1982), delivers what it promises. Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War (Cambridge, 2005), demonstrates how the Soviet-American confrontation spread to the Third World.

Warren I. Cohen and Akira Iriye, eds., The Great Powers in East Asia, 1953–1960 (New York, 1990), includes the perspectives of British, Chinese, Japanese, and Soviet, as well as American, scholars. The Chinese essays are especially interesting. Simei Qing, From Allies to Enemies: Visions of Modernity, Identity, and U.S.-China Relations, 1945–1960 (Cambridge, Mass., 2007), is an important guide to understanding both American and Chinese policies in that era. Akira Iriye and Warren I. Cohen, eds., The United States and Japan in the Postwar World (Lexington, Ky., 1989), has substantial material on the 1950s, from Japanese and American scholars, economists, and political scientists as well as historians. Nancy Bernkopf Tucker’s The China Threat (New York, 2012) offers the final word on American policy toward China in the Eisenower years.

Robert J. McMahon is thoughtful as always in “Eisenhower and Third World Nationalism: A Critique of the Revisionists,” Political Science Quarterly 101 (1986): 453–73. On the Eisenhower administration and Castro, see Richard E. Welch, Jr., The Response to Revolution: The United States and the Cuban Revolution, 1959–1961 (Chapel Hill, 1985). Stephen Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America (Chapel Hill, 1988), is cast more broadly. Diane Kunz, The Economic Diplomacy of the Suez Crisis (Chapel Hill, 1991), provides a fresh approach to a battered subject. The single most important volume on the Suez crisis is W. Roger Louis and Roger Owen, eds., Suez 1956 (New York, 1989). John C. Campbell, Defense of the Middle East (New York, 1960), is still useful for understanding the designs of the Eisenhower administration in the region, but Peter L. Hahn’s The United States, Great, Britain, & Egypt, 1945–1956 (Chapel Hill, 1991) and Caught in the Middle East (Chapel Hill, 2004) mine more recently available sources. Howard Palfrey Jones, Eisenhower’s ambassador to Indonesia, relates the pathetic tale of being undermined by Washington and especially the CIA in his efforts to woo Sukarno in Indonesia: The Possible Dream (New York, 1971). George M. Kahin, Intervention (New York, 1986), is excellent on Indochina.

Useful works on the Soviet side include Adam Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence (New York, 1974), William Zimmerman, Soviet Perspectives on International Relations, 1956–1967 (Princeton, 1969), and Bruce D. Porter, The USSR in Third World Conflicts (Cambridge, 1984), as well as Zubock’s Failed Empire, cited earlier. William Taubman’s Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York, 2003) is essential reading.

Thomas Paterson, ed., Kennedy’s Quest for Victory (New York, 1989), is the best place to start the study of the early 1960s. Warren I. Cohen, Dean Rusk (Totowa, N.J., 1980), is more revealing than Rusk’s own story, As I Saw It (New York, 1990). See Gordon Chang, Friends and Enemies (Stanford, 1990), for some especially provocative suggestions on Kennedy’s policy toward China.

The Berlin crisis has not received as much recent attention as has the Cuban missile crisis. It can be studied in Philip Windsor, City on Leave (London, 1963); Jean Edward Smith, The Defense of Berlin (Baltimore, 1963); Robert M. Slusser, The Berlin Crisis of 1961 (Baltimore, 1973); and Jack M. Shick, The Berlin Crisis, 1958–62 (Philadelphia, 1972). See also the relevant portions of Alexander L. George and Richard Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy (New York, 1974), and Wolfram F. Hanrieder, Germany, America, Europe: Forty Years of German Foreign Policy (New Haven, 1989).

The history of the missile crisis has benefited enormously from a series of conferences involving American, Cuban, and Soviet participants. It is apparent the world was even closer to nuclear war than we had imagined previously. See James G. Blight and David A. Welch, On the Brink (New York, 1989), and Raymond L. Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis, rev. ed. (Washington, D.C., 1989). See also Leycester Coltman, The Real Fidel Castro (New Haven, 2003).

An unusually wide range of documentation has been available on the war in Vietnam since the Pentagon Papers were first published in 1971. The U.S. Department of State Historical Office subsequently accelerated publication of the relevant volumes of the Foreign Relations series.

George Herring, America’s Longest War, 4th ed. (New York, 2002), remains the single most valuable book on the war in Vietnam. Frederik Logevall, Choosing War (Berkeley, 1999), is a superb study of the decisions that led to America’s massive intervention. In On Strategy (Carlisle Barracks, Pa., 1981), Harry Summers explains how the war could have been won. Other books of interest include Gabriel Kolko’s dense Anatomy of a War (New York, 1985) and Timothy J. Lomperis’s The War Everyone Lost – and Won (Baton Rouge, 1984). Marilyn B. Young, The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990 (New York, 1991), is a powerful statement by a leading historian and antiwar activist. Lomperis, Reading the Wind (Durham, N.C., 1987), is a valuable analysis of the fictional and memoir literature. See also Katherine Kinney, Friendly Fire: American Images of the Vietnam War (Oxford, 2000). Ilya V. Gaiduk, Confronting Vietnam (Washington, D.C., 2003), reveals the Soviet role from 1954 to 1963, and Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975 (Chapel Hill, 2000) provides important insights into Beijing’s efforts.

The single most valuable book for the Nixon, Ford, and Carter years is Raymond L. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation (Washington, D.C., 1985). Although ruthless editing might have produced a better book at half the length, it is a gold mine of information provided by a thoughtful midlevel participant. Henry Kissinger’s two-volume memoir, The White House Years (Boston, 1979) and Years of Upheaval (Boston, 1982), is self-serving but nonetheless essential reading. Walter Isaacson, Kissinger (New York, 1992), provides a reasonable corrective. William Hyland, Mortal Rivals: Superpower Relations from Nixon to Reagan (New York, 1987), is a useful study by another midlevel participant.

The complex character of Richard M. Nixon is deciphered only in Garry Wills, Nixon Agonistes (Boston, 1970). Good critical accounts of the Nixon-Kissinger years are provided by the journalists Tad Szulc, The Illusion of Peace (New York, 1979), and Seymour Hersh, The Price of Power (New York, 1983), the latter probably a trifle severe for the taste of most readers.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle (New York, 1983), is informative, especially of the author’s efforts as national security adviser to usurp power once reserved for the secretary of state. For ego, the memoir rivals Kissinger’s – but lacks the self-deprecating wit that was always Henry’s charm. Instead of Carter’s memoir, look to Gaddis Smith, Morality, Reason and Power (New York, 1986), for an understanding of Carter’s foreign policy efforts. Cyrus Vance tells his own story in Hard Choices (New York, 1983).

Given the limited documentation available, Soviet-American relations are covered surprisingly well. Robert S. Litwak, Détente and the Nixon Doctrine (Cambridge, 1984), neatly indicates the contrasting expectations each side had of détente. Joseph S. Nye, Jr., The Making of America’s Soviet Policy (New Haven, 1984), contains several useful essays. Harry Gelman, The Brezhnev Politburo and the Decline of Détente (Ithaca, 1984), is vintage Kremlinology. The Soviet thrust in the Third World characteristic of the late 1970s is analyzed nicely in Rajan Menon, Soviet Power and the Third World (New Haven, 1986), and Jerry Hough, The Struggle for the Third World (Washington, D.C., 1986). David Holloway, The Soviet Union and the Arms Race, 2d ed. (New Haven, 1984), focuses on the other critical issue in Soviet-American relations in the 1970s. Melvyn P. Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War (New York, 2007), and Zubock, Failed Empire, are especially good on the Brezhnev years.

For Sino-American relations, see Harry Harding, A Fragile Relationship: The United States and China Since 1972 (Washington, D.C., 1992). John W. Garver, China’s Decision for Rapprochement with the United States, 1968–1971 (Boulder, Colo., 1982), is interesting and suggestive. Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, Strait Talk: United States-Taiwan Relations and the Crisis with China (Cambridge, Mass., 2009), provides the definitive analysis of the Taiwan issue. See also Michel Oksenberg, “A Decade of Sino-American Relations,” Foreign Affairs 61 (1982): 175–95. The Chinese perspective is offered in David Shambaugh’s fascinating analysis of the views of China’s foreign policy elite, Beautiful Imperialist (Princeton, 1991). See also Chen Jian’s Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill, 2001). William B. Quandt, Decade of Decisions: American Policy Toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1967–1976 (Berkeley, 1977), and Gary Sick, All Fall Down (New York, 1985), are excellent on Arab-Israeli relations and the collapse of the American position in Iran, respectively. On Iran, see also James A. Bill, The Eagle and the Lion (New Haven, 1988). Oksenberg, Quandt, and Sick all served on the National Security Council. For economic issues, especially the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, Joanne Gowa, Closing the Gold Window: Domestic Politics and the End of Bretton Woods (Ithaca, 1983), and Robert Gilpin, The Political Economy of International Relations (Princeton, 1987), are most helpful.

The journalist Lou Cannon has been studying Ronald Reagan for a very long time, and his President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York, 1991) is the most knowledgeable and the best-balanced biography. Another journalist-cum-historian, Don Oberdorfer, has written a valuable portrait of Reagan’s metamorphosis from apocalyptic horseman to Gorbachev’s partner in the quest for peace. See his The Turn: From Cold War to the New Era: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1983–1990 (New York, 1991), based heavily on interviews with George Shultz. Shultz’s own memoir, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York, 1993), is also useful. Leffler’s For the Soul of Mankind and James Mann’s The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan (New York, 2009) are superb on Reagan’s transformation. See also Michael Mandelbaum and Strobe Talbott, Reagan and Gorbachev (New York, 1987), and Talbott, Deadly Gambits (New York, 1984). A very thoughtful, accessible overview of the Reagan years is Robert W. Tucker, “Reagan’s Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs 68 (1989): 1–27.

The role of the Bush administration in ending the Cold War is most accessible in James A. Baker III, The Politics of Diplomacy (New York, 1995), and George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York, 1998).

The Soviet side of the 1980s is approached most easily through Seweryn Bialer, Politics, Society, and Nationality Inside Gorbachev’s Russia (Boulder, Colo., 1989), and Seweryn Bialer and Michael Mandelbaum, Gorbachev’s Russia and American Foreign Policy (Boulder, Colo., 1988). See especially articles by Robert Legvold and Bialer. The articles in Marshall D. Shulman, ed., East-West Tensions in the Third World (New York, 1986), are also helpful; see the essays by Elizabeth K. Valkenier, Donald S. Zagoria, and Frances Fukuyama in particular. Jack F. Matlock, Autopsy of an Empire: The American Ambassador’s Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union (New York, 1995), delivers on the promise of its title. Archie Brown, The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford, 1997), is elegantly written, insightful, and accessible.

The historical context for American policy toward Central America is provided by Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions (1984). For a more contemporary focus see Nora Hamilton et al., Crisis in Central America (Boulder, Colo., 1988); Mary B. Vanderlaan, Revolution and Foreign Policy in Nicaragua (Boulder, Colo., 1986); Robert A. Pastor, Condemned to Repetition (Princeton, 1987); and Tommie Sue Montgomery, Revolution in El Salvador, 2d ed. (Boulder, Colo., 1990).

In addition to works already mentioned, see Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York, 1987); David P. Calleo, The Imperious Economy (Cambridge, Mass., 1982); Richard Rosecrance, The Rise of the Trading State (New York, 1986); and John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace (Oxford, 1987).

Baker’s Politics of Diplomacy and Bush-Scowcroft, World Transformed, are useful introductions to the Bush administration’s activities beyond its dealings with Moscow. Lawrence Freeman and Ephraim Karsh, The Gulf Conflict, 1990–91: Diplomacy and War in the New World Order (Princeton, 1993), and the relevant chapters in Gary R. Hess, Presidential Decisions for War (Baltimore, 2001), are excellent on the Gulf War. For a brief discussion of Bush’s mishandling of the Tiananmen massacre, see Warren I. Cohen, America’s Response to China, 5th ed. (New York, 2010), and the oral histories of James Lilley and Winston Lord in Nancy Bernkopf Tucker’s China Confidential (New York, 2000). On the search for a new role for the United States in the post–Cold War world, see the relevant chapter in Warren I. Cohen, America’s Failing Empire (Oxford, 2005), and Ronald Steel, Temptations of a Superpower (Cambridge, Mass., 1995).

Warren Christopher’s Chances of a Lifetime (New York, 2001) indicates his priorities as Clinton’s secretary of state, 1993–6. Thomas Lipman, Madeleine Albright and the New American Diplomacy (Boulder, Colo., 2000), is best on her service as ambassador to the UN during Clinton’s first term. Michael Dobbs, Madeleine Albright: A Twentieth Century Odyssey (New York, 1999), captures the woman and her life story. William Hyland, Clinton’s World: Remaking American Foreign Policy (Westport, Conn., 1999), is an unflattering analysis. Derek Chollet and James Goldgeier, America Between the Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11 (New York, 2008), is the best book to date on the policies of the Clinton era. The Russian side of those years can be found in three excellent studies: Michael Mandelbaum, ed., The New Russian Foreign Policy (New York, 1998), Lilia Shevtsova, Yeltsin’s Russia: Myths and Realities (Washington, D.C., 1999), and Archie Brown and Lilia Shevtsova, eds., Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin: Political Leadership in Russia’s Transition (Washington, D.C., 2001). For relations with China, see David M. Lampton, Same Bed, Different Dreams (Berkeley, 2001), and Robert Suettinger, Beyond Tiananmen: The Politics of U.S. Chinese Relations, 1989–2000 (Washington, D.C., 2003). For Japan, Michael Armacost, Friends or Rivals: The Insider’s Account of U.S. Japan Relations (New York, 1996), remains useful. Samantha Power, “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide (New York, 2002), has blood-curdling accounts of events in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Kosovo.

The essential book on the backdrop to the Bush administration’s foreign policy is James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York, 2004). Also very useful is the volume by Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay, America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C., 2003). Among the conservative critiques of neoconservative influences on Bush’s policies, the most temperate is probably Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neoconservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge, 2004). See also Glenn Kessler, The Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy (New York, 2007).

The story of 9/11 and its aftermath is obviously incomplete. An excellent book with which to begin is Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York, 2006), to be accompanied by Richard Clarke’s Against All Enemies (New York, 2004). Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars (New York, 2004) is excellent on the early efforts in Afghanistan. Seth Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires (New York, 2009), does justice to what followed. To understand why so many members of the foreign policy elite accepted the decision to attack Iraq, start with Kenneth Pollack, The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq (New York, 2002). For events subsequent to the invasion, see Thomas Ricks, Fiasco: America’s Military Adventure in Iraq (New York, 2006), and George Packer, The Assassin’s Gate: America in Iraq (New York, 2005).

For a superb analysis of China’s grand strategy, see Avery Goldstein’s Rising to the Challenge (Stanford, 2005). Russian strategy is best understood after reading Robert Legvold, ed., Russian Foreign Policy in the 21st Century & the Shadow of the Past (New York, 2007).

To appreciate the problems that the Obama administration was forced to address on the day it took office, David Sanger’s The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power (New York, 2009) is the best place to start. James Mann’s The Obamians (New York, 2012) examines the administrator’s performance through 2011.