Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy
Stephen Wertheim
Harvard University Press: 2020
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Debates over America’s place in the world love binaries: Hamilton vs. Jefferson, Wilson vs. Lodge and isolation vs. intervention. Such categories are never entirely accurate, but they often overlap with expansive and ongoing issues, assuring them a long life beyond historical moments.

Isolation vs. intervention had its moment during the ‘Great Debate’—the ferocious battle over US intervention in the Second World War, which reached a fever pitch after the fall of France in 1940-41. That battle segued into longer historical arguments about US hegemony that generations of historians have sustained. Enter the debate Stephen Wertheim, whose new book’s back jacket promises a ‘revisionist’ take on the debate, not just over US entry into the war but how a distinct period in the 1940s led to limitless world commitments. ‘Revisionist’ is correct in several senses. It does challenge some accepted, comfortable views, doing so by reinventing and restating what has long been termed a ‘revisionist’ argument.

• Tags: David Ekbladh, Issue 25, Stephen Wertheim, United States