Tomorrow, the World

“You really ought to read it… It is a tour de force… While Wertheim is not the first to expose isolationism as a carefully constructed myth, he does so with devastating effect. Most of all, he helps his readers understand that ‘so long as the phantom of isolationism is held to be the most grievous sin, all is permitted.’”—Andrew J. Bacevich, The Nation

“The only recent book to explore U.S. elites’ decision to become the world’s primary power in the early 1940s—a profoundly important choice that has affected the lives of billions of people throughout the globe… Contributes to the effort to transform U.S. foreign policy by giving pro-restraint Americans a usable past. Though Tomorrow, the World is not a polemic, its implications are invigorating… Wertheim opens space for Americans to reexamine their own history and ask themselves whether primacy has ever really met their interests.”—Daniel Bessner, The New Republic

“In writing the history of the country’s decision to embrace a militarist vision of world order—and to do so, counterintuitively, through the creation of the United Nations—Wertheim provides an importantly revisionist account of U.S. foreign policy in the 1940s, one that helps us think anew about internationalism today… The contemporary stakes of Wertheim’s work are plainly apparent… A reminder of just how strange it is that Americans have come to see military supremacy as a form of selfless altruism, as a gift to the world.”—Sam Lebovic, Boston Review

“Wertheim…details the thinking behind America’s pursuit of global dominance from the 1940s to the present day in this impeccably researched debut history… This fine-grained account sheds new light on an era and a worldview too often obscured by gauzy patriotism.”—Publishers Weekly

“Stephen Wertheim isn’t only a great historian of American foreign policy. He uses history to offer a critique of American foreign policy that Americans desperately need now.”—Peter Beinart, author of The Icarus Syndrome

“How did the United States acquire the will to lead the world? How did primacy come to be the natural posture of America’s policy elite? In this groundbreaking new history, Stephen Wertheim overturns our existing understanding of the emergence of American global dominance. A work of brilliantly original historical scholarship that will transform the way we think about the past, the present, and the future.”—Adam Tooze, author of Crashed

“Americans now believe global leadership is their birthright; this splendid book uncovers the origins of that conviction. Wertheim’s detailed analysis of strategic planning before and during World War II shows that the pursuit of global primacy was a conscious choice, made by a foreign policy elite that equated ‘internationalism’ with the active creation of a world order based on U.S. military preponderance. Myths about the seductive dangers of ‘isolationism’ helped marginalize alternative perspectives, leaving armed dominance and military interventionism as the default settings for U.S. foreign policy. A carefully researched and beautifully written account, Tomorrow, the World sheds new light on a critical period in U.S. history and reminds us that internationalism can take many different forms.”—Stephen M. Walt, author of The Hell of Good Intentions

“How did the idea of American military supremacy come to be understood as essential and inevitable? In this important and beautifully crafted revisionist history, Stephen Wertheim shows the way a foreign policy consensus in favor of American predominance was forged as Hitler ransacked Europe. It became an assumed necessity after World War II, and later fueled military build-up and ongoing armed conflict. By revealing the contingent path of American global militarism, Wertheim makes an urgent and overdue reassessment possible.”—Mary L. Dudziak, author of War Time