Daydream Believers : How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power

One of Slate's most celebrated columnists reveals the political daydreams that have created our foreign policy nightmare Fred Kaplan combines high-level reporting with razor-sharp analysis to explain, once and for all, how President Bush got so far off track on foreign policy-and why much of the nation followed him. Kaplan convincingly argues that the disasters unleashed by Bush and other "Daydream Believers" stemmed not from mere incompetence but from two grave misconceptions: that the way the world works changed after 9/11, when it didn't; and that America emerged from its Cold War victory stronger than before, when in fact it was weaker. Misreading the nature of world politics and the lessons of history, they believed that new technology transformed the nature of warfare; that "moral clarity" yields successful policy; that freedom is humanity's default mode and that, therefore, democracy will blossom from the ashes of an overthrown dictator; and that America will triumph as the preeminent power, almost without trying.While Bush may be on his way out of office, many of his would-be successors-including Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Rudy Giuliani-have displayed various levels of Daydreamer beliefs. It is time for the country to wake up. As foreign policy dominates the headlines and the campaign trail in 2008, this will be the smartest, best-researched, and most hotly debated book on the subject.Fred Kaplan (Brooklyn, NY) writes the "War Stories" column in Slate and has also written for the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, the New Yorker, the New Republic, and other publications. He is a former Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe reporter who covered the Pentagon and post-Soviet Moscow.

Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column in Slate. The author of the classic book The Wizards of Armageddon, he has also written for the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the Atlantic Monthly, and other publications. He earned a Ph.D. from MIT, worked as a foreign policy aide on Capitol Hill, and spent decades as a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter in Washington and Moscow. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, NPR journalist Brooke Gladstone.