What is now called isolationism might also be called "minding your own business", which is precisely what America did for several generations. Europe seemed a far-off place, ruled by monarchies and aristocracies, anti-egalitarian and racked by wars and other troubles; America saw itself as a new start, the land of democracy and equal opportunity. Americans were anti-war (although the Civil War of 1861-65 might seem to contradict this) and disliked standing armies trade and business and hard work were what made a nation strong. They also greatly disliked political and military involvement abroad. So when President Wilson hesitantly drew his countrymen into the first World War, he was breaking many moulds and parting with many cherished national beliefs. By 1917, the year in which the US became a belligerent, the Allied powers were already hugely in debt to her for war credits, although the British naval blockade had infuriated many Americans and seemed a gross abrogation of international law. After 1918, the exhaustion of Europe gave America a unique position in global politics, though again she retreated for a time into relative isolation. The generation which emerged into power just before, or during, the second World War had grown up in post-Wilsonian America, and they were able to think internationally - Roosevelt, MacArthur, Eisenhower, Dulles, Averell Harriman, etc. In fact, they shaped the destinies of the entire West, and the fading British Empire could only play a second fiddle to her Atlantic ally. Professor Fromkin traces the careers and rise of these remarkable men, most of them from widely differing backgrounds Roosevelt an East Coast patrician, MacArthur the son of a soldier, Eisenhower the child of an impoverished rural family,

Truman a Middle Western storekeeper. Roosevelt, in particular, remains an enigma, a man who to his friends often seemed lightweight and even frivolous, yet had a profound political instinct and faced momentous decisions with nerve and energy. This fascinating book is particularly illuminating about the 1930s, the political intrigues and complex social scene, and the ineluctable factors which transformed America, almost against its will, into a global superpower.