A wide-ranging rethinking of the many factors that comprise the making of American Grand Strategy.What is grand strategy? What does it aim to achieve? And what differentiates it from normal strategic thought--what, in other words, makes it "grand"? In answering these questions, most scholars have focused on diplomacy and warfare, so much so that "grand strategy" has become almost an equivalent of "military history." The traditional attention paid to military affairs is understandable, but in today's world it leaves out much else that could be considered political, and therefore strategic. It is in fact possible to consider, and even reach, a more capacious understanding of grand strategy, one that still includes the battlefield and the negotiating table while expanding beyond them. Just as contemporary world politics is driven by a wide range of non-military issues, the most thorough considerations of grand strategy must consider the bases of peace and security--including gender, race, the environment, and a wide range of cultural, social, political, and economic issues.Rethinking American Grand Strategy assembles a roster of leading historians to examine America's place in the world. Its innovative chapters re-examine familiar figures, such as John Quincy Adams, George Kennan, and Henry Kissinger, while also revealing the forgotten episodes and hidden voices of American grand strategy. They expand the scope of diplomatic and military history by placing the grand strategies of public health, race, gender, humanitarianism, and the law alongside military and diplomatic affairs to reveal hidden strategists as well as strategies.

AcknowledgmentsContributorsIntroduction- Christopher McKnight Nichols and Andrew PrestonI. Frameworks1. Getting Grand Strategy Right: Clearing Away Common Fallacies in the Grand Strategy Debate- Hal Brands2. The Blob and the Mob: On Grand Strategy and Social Change- Beverly Gage3. Turning the Tide: The Application of Grand Strategy to Global Health- Elizabeth H. Bradley and Lauren A. TaylorII. Historical Grand Narratives4. Extending the Sphere: A Federalist Grand Strategy- Charles Edel5. Grand Strategy of the Master Class: Slavery and Foreign Policy from the Antebellum Era to the Civil War-Matthew Karp6. A Useful Category of Analysis? Grand Strategy and US Foreign Relations from the Civil War through World War I- Katherine C. Epstein7. Grand Strategies (or Ascendant Ideas) since 1919- David MilneIII. Recasting Central Figures8. Woodrow Wilson, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Beyond: American Internationalists and the Crucible of World War I-I- Christopher McKnight Nichols9. Franklin Roosevelt, the New Deal, and Grand Strategy: Constructing the Postwar Order- Elizabeth Borgwardt10. Foreign Policy Begins at Home: Americans, Grand Strategy, and World War II- Michaela Hoenicke Moore11. National Security as Grand Strategy: Edward Mead Earle and the Burdens of World Power- Andrew Preston12. The Misanthropy Diaries: Containment, Democracy, and the Prejudices of George Frost Kennan- David Greenberg13. Implementing Grand Strategy: The Nixon-Kissinger Revolution at the National Security Council- William Inboden14. George H.W. Bush: Strategy and the Stream of History- Jeffrey A. EngelIV. New Approaches15. Foreign Missions and Strategy, Foreign Missions as Strategy- Emily Conroy-Krutz16. The Unbearable Whiteness of Grand Strategy- Adriane Lentz-Smith17. Rival Visions of Nationhood: Immigration Policy, Grand Strategy, and Contentious Politics- Daniel J. Tichenor18. Disastrous Grand Strategy: US Humanitarian Assistance and Global Natural Catastrophe- Julia F. Irwin19. Denizens of a Center: Rethinking Early Cold War Grand Strategy- Ryan Irwin20. Reproductive Politics and Grand Strategy- Laura BriggsV. Reflections from the American Century21. Casualties and the Concept of Grandness: A View from the Korean War- Mary L. Dudziak22. American Grand Strategy: How Grand Has It Been? How Much Does It Matter?- Fredrik LogevallIndex