We're still living in what Henry Luce called the American Century some eighty years after the publisher proclaimed its inception. Historians have put forth various interpretations for how and why this happened: that America was always an irrepressible nation whose expansionist impulses presaged its hegemonic ambitions; that with all of its resources and power, the country had no choice but to embrace the challenge of global stability.

Now Stephen Wertheim, of the Quincy Institute and Columbia University, propounds a provocative new thesis: that the hegemonic temptation was the product of a coterie of strategic planners from the American foreign policy elite who crafted the notion and sold it to the country by distorting America's distinct and "foundational" philosophy of internationalism.