'Happily the new, four-volume book provides an opportunity to scan the past two centuries for indications of the shape of foreign policy in the post-Cold War world. Each of the four books stands on its own. Each offers a clear overview of a particular period written by a distinguished historian drawing on considerable body of research, itself the product of decades of scholarly endeavor. None is simply a chronicle of events.'- World Policy Journal

Acknowledgments; Prelude; Part I. At War's End: Visions of a New World Order; Part II. Origins of the Cold War; Part III. The Korean War and its Consequences; Part IV. New Leaders and New Arenas in the Cold War; Part V. Crisis Resolution; Part VI. America's Longest War; Part VII. The Rise and Fall of Detente; Part VIII. In God's Country; Conclusion: America and the World, 1945-1991; Bibliographic Essay; Index.