A comprehensive, sweeping history of America’s rise to global superpower—from the Spanish-American War to World War II—by the acclaimed author ofDangerous Nation“With extraordinary range and research, Robert Kagan has illuminated America’s quest to reconcile its new power with its historical purpose in world order in the early twentieth century.” —Dr. Henry KissingerAt the dawn of the twentieth century, the United States was one of the world’s richest, most populous, most technologically advanced nations. It was also a nation divided along numerous fault lines, with conflicting aspirations and concerns pulling it in different directions. And it was a nation unsure about the role it wanted to play in the world, if any. Americans were the beneficiaries of a global order they had no responsibility for maintaining. Many preferred to avoid being drawn into what seemed an ever more competitive, conflictual, and...