The authors contributing to this volume cover a wide range of issues. Emily Rosenberg discusses the transmission of American consumer culture overseas, particularly in terms of images of women. Gerald Horne explores the racial implications of US foreign policy. Reinhold Wagnleitner discusses the impact of American popular culture in Europe. Akira Iriye examines the international role of non-governmental organisations in areas relating (inter alia) to education, humanitarian relief and human rights. Volker Berghahn writes about the role of philanthropical organisations. Other essays focus on US foreign relations in East Asia, and in the Third World, and some provide overviews of American foreign policy over the course of the century. As much as it illuminates American foreign relations, Hogan’s book sheds light on this particular academic field, on its methodological sophistication and thematic diversity, as it now stands. For non-specialists who assume this field to be hopelessly old-fashioned, reading The Ambiguous Legacy will prove salutary.

The book introduces readers to current thinking on some of the most contentious issues in the history of US foreign relations. One is the question of the motivations behind American foreign policy. H. W. Brands identifies three key forces—the drive for overseas markets, the desire to disseminate democracy, and the need to bolster national security—and argues that each of these motivations came to the fore during different periods. Godfrey Hodgson, in a wonderfully crafted essay, perceives two competing ideas in American thinking. The first, generated by the frontier experience, aimed at expansion overseas; the second, anchored in the immigrant experience, aimed at isolating America from a seemingly corrupt world. Walter LaFeber, for his part, argues that the impetus to disseminate market capitalism was the key engine driving American foreign policy.

There is also a debate in this volume over whether the impact of America on the world in the twentieth century has, in the main, been benign. The contributors disagree profoundly on this. Some argue that the United States, culturally and/or politically, has played an extremely important role in spreading democracy globally. Others, however, contend that the American record is far less commendable. Walter Lafeber argues that the spread of US capitalism has not usually entailed the spread of democracy. Others note the often less-than-savoury US interventions in Latin America, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Another key issue taken up by this collection is the question of whether, as is traditionally assumed, presidential foreign policy was the chief way in which the United States influenced the world in the twentieth century. A number of these essays do dwell on the familiar aspects of American foreign policy—Wilson’s intervention in the First World War, relations with the Soviet Union, Vietnam. Others, however, argue that state policy was not the key factor. Akira Iriye, in his essay on the role played by non-governmental organisations, suggests that these bodies were of vital importance in transmitting American values to the world. Berghahn’s essay covers the same sort of ground staked by Iriye.

Finally, these essays cast an eye towards the future. While some suggest that the twentyfirst century, as with its predecessor, will be an American-dominated century, others are less certain, noting the rise of Asian power and stressing the need for the United States to implement a more restrained, less expansive foreign policy.

I can recommend this book to readers with much enthusiasm. These essays are lucid and consistently engaging. They succeed, collectively, in presenting a range of interpretations and methodological approaches. The volume will also introduce non-specialists to the work of a number of the most distinguished and influential scholars in the field, including Lafeber, Iriye, Rosenberg and Michael Hunt. Michael Hogan has done an excellent job in crafting such an admirable collection.

As one surveys American foreign policy over the course of the last century, and reflects on the issues raised in The Ambiguous Legacy, it would seem clear that the American record has been very mixed. Clearly, the United States was of vital importance in bringing about the defeat of fascism in the Second World War. It also fathered the League of Nations and United Nations, idealistic in conception if often ineffectual in practice. It further helped after 1945 to fashion a western Europe that was democratic and economically vibrant. On the other hand, there is a catalogue of US interventions in other countries—Cuba, Haiti, the Philippines and Nicaragua, in the early part of the century—that cannot be viewed as benign. During the Cold War era, with fears of the Communist challenge intensifying, the United States overthrew sovereign governments in Iran (in 1953) and Guatemala (in 1954), and sought to do so in Cuba in the 1960s and Nicaragua in the 1980s. The CIA attempted to assassinate various foreign leaders, as revealed by a 1975 US Senate investigation. And close to 60,000 Americans died in a war in Vietnam that the United States ended up losing, and which could hardly be said to have been in defence of a democratic government. The best thing about The Ambiguous Legacy is that it shows that the triumphalism which dominated the popular discourse in the West at the end of the Cold War has not stifled serious debate on the true merits of American foreign relations during the twentieth century.