Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy by Stephen Wertheim

"Even in these dismal times genuinely important books do occasionally make their appearance...You really ought to read it...A tour de force...While Wertheim is not the first to expose isolationism as a carefully constructed myth, he does so with devastating effect." --Andrew J. Bacevich, The Nation   For most of its history, the United States avoided making political and military commitments that would entangle it in power politics. Then, suddenly, it conceived a new role for itself as an armed superpower--and never looked back. In Tomorrow, the World, Stephen Wertheim traces America's transformation to World War II, right before the attack on Pearl Harbor.   As late as 1940, the small coterie formulating U.S. foreign policy wanted British preeminence to continue. Axis conquests swept away their assumptions, leading them to conclude that America should extend its form of law and order across the globe, and back it at gunpoint. No one really favored "isolationism"--a term introduced by