Foreign Relations

Beginning with Thomas Jefferson's expedition against the Barbary Pirates and moving onto the Boxer Rebellion, the occupations in Haiti, Nicaragua and the Philippines, and the conflicts in Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo, and Afghanistan, this book shows how these smaller actions have been essential to the growth and projection of American power.

Even as America asserts itself globally, it lacks a grand strategy to replace "containment of communism." This book outlines a strategy, directing America's powers to the achievement of its large purposes. Central to this strategy is the power of American ideals, what the author calls "the fourth power".

A finalist for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, this acclaimed history uses foreign relations as the lens through which to tell the story of America's dramatic rise from 13 disparate colonies huddled along the Atlantic coast to the world's greatest superpower.

In this remarkable story from the frontlines of the undeclared battlefields of the War on Terror, journalist Jeremy Scahill documents the new paradigm of American war: fought far from any declared battlefield, by units that do not officially exist, in thousands of operations a month that are never publicly acknowledged.