American Umpire

Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman

“A useful, cogent examination of why, despite some folly and ill judgment, America continues to be the one country the world looks to when in crisis or need of support.”—Kirkus Reviews

“In this bold revision of the history of American foreign policy, Stanford historian Cobbs Hoffman upends the notion that the U.S. was ever an empire, arguing instead that democratic capitalism, in which the people are sovereign and individuals own and generate wealth, essentially sells (and is selling) itself.”—Publishers Weekly

“American Umpire is startlingly original, a fascinating interpretation of the history of the United States in the world.”—Erez Manela, co-editor of The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective

“Few ideas about world politics seem more popular than the notion that the United States, still the world’s great superpower, has formed its own form of empire. This is the notion that Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman challenges in this fast-paced, always provocative, and certainly controversial interpretation of America’s global role.”—Jack N. Rakove, author of Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America

“Are we really exceptional? Have we really improved the world through our foreign activities? Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman offers a resounding yes to both questions. With insight and wit, she explains how Americans have helped to build more open, accountable, and peaceful societies across the globe.”—Jeremi Suri, author of Liberty’s Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building from the Founders to Obama

“American Umpire is the most persuasive and sensible one-volume interpretation of the whole history of American foreign policy to appear in at least a generation.”—Philip Zelikow, University of Virginia