Promise and Peril

Reviews / Votes

In this important new book, Christopher McKnight Nichols invites a broad reconsideration of [isolationism] by tracing its origins back to the debates over U.S. imperialism at the end of the 19th century and its surprising continuities--and surprising bedfellows--over the next-half century...Nichols has done us a valuable service in providing us with tools to see history anew--and to wield it responsibly. -- Jim Cullen History News Network 20110419 [A] highly perceptive work...Promise and Peril is a provocative study, demolishing many stereotypes and offering new patterns concerning liberal anti-interventionism. It deserves a wide readership. -- Justus Doenecke H-Net 20110701 Americans are always on the lookout for isolationism in the U.S.--and it never arrives. In a most clearly explicated expose, Nichols<'author> explains why. Using the bio-historical approach, he brings forth salient figures from the Gilded Age to serve as examples to elucidate the nuances of the U.S.'s complex ideology. The author refutes prior simplistic assessments of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson's "no entangling alliances" descriptor of U.S. foreign policy, shifting the focus from isolationism to "meaningful international involvement (where) nothing less than the meaning of America was at stake." Through the voices often articulators of isolationist thinking, Nichols convincingly concludes "American policy in the interwar era was not nearly as isolationist as many have characterized it." Rather, these individuals proposed a "salvific prescription to reconstitute a better society" in the midst of turbulent times. Clarifying the strains of isolationism serves as a useful tool for understanding the nuanced argument of Gilded Age thought prescient at the dawn of a new global age. Beneath the study of isolationist thought, Nichols reawakens a discourse of what it means to be an American. -- G. Donato Choice 20120101