American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers

Perry Anderson is one of the most reliably interesting commentators on many subjects, but especially American and British foreign policy. A long-time editor/contributor to the New Left Review and London Review of Books, Anderson writes from the left but maintains a rigorous analytical style, which gives him an outsider’s perspective that is consistently worth reading. In the first half of his revisionist history American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers, he offers a high-level overview of American foreign policy from the founding of the republic through present day. In the superior second half, he reassesses the careers of a number of respected statesmen (including Walter Russell Mead, Francis Fukuyama, George Kennan, and Zbigniew Brzezinski) who are often shown to be more erratic and less impressive than their reputations.