This book provides a succinct and accessible interpretation of the major event and ideas that have shaped U.S. foreign relations since the American Revolution-historical factors that now affect our current debates and commitments in the Middle East as well as Europe and Asia.
American Foreign Relations since Independence explores the relationship of American policies to national interest and the limits of the nation's power, reinterpreting the nature and history of American foreign relations.
The book brings together the collective knowledge of three generations of diplomatic historians to create a readily accessible introduction to the subject. The authors explicitly challenge and reject the perennial debates about isolationism versus internationalism, instead asserting that American foreign relations have been characterized by the permanent tension inherent in America's desire to engage with the world and its equally powerful determination to avoid "entanglement" in the world's troubles. This work is ideally suited as a resource for students of politics, international affairs, and history, and it will provide compelling insights for informed general readers.

Richard Dean Burns is professor emeritus of history at California State University, Los Angeles, CA. He is the coauthor/co-editor of 12 books, including Praeger's Reagan, Bush, Gorbachev: Revisiting the End of the Cold War and ABC-CLIO's Arms Control and Disarmament: A Bibliography.

Preface
1 The Diplomacy of the Revolution
2 The New Republic in a World at War
3 The War of 1812: Reestablishing American Independence
4 The Monroe Doctrine and Latin American Independence
5 Manifest Destiny Triumphant: Oregon, Texas, and California
6 A House Divided: Diplomacy during the Civil War
7 Territorial and Commercial Expansionism: Alaska, the Caribbean, and the Far East
8 War with Spain and the New Manifest Destiny
9 The United States Adjusts to Its New Status
10 Woodrow Wilson and a World at War
11 The Slow Death of Versailles
12 World War II: The Grand Alliance
13 A New Global Struggle: Founding of the UN to the Cold War
14 Crises, Conflicts, and Coexistence
15 The United States and Southeast Asia: Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam
16 Reagan, Bush, Gorbachev, and the End of the Cold War
17 The United States and the Middle East: Israel, Lebanon, Iran, and Iraq
18 Twenty-First-Century Challenges
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index