Choice 评论
Dueck (public and international affairs, George Mason Univ.) has written a book that combines solid scholarship with an explicitly political message. He seeks to show American conservatives that despite the debacles of the George W. Bush administration, they still have "a history of foreign policy success to which they can turn, if they are willing to recall the examples set by previous Republican presidents.. Toward that end, Dueck examines the foreign policy ideas and/or actions of several post-WW II Republican leaders, including Robert Taft, Eisenhower, Goldwater, Nixon, Kissinger, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. Non-conservatives may find fault with Dueck's interpretations of certain key events as well as his failure to consider what the disastrous consequences of conservative ideas such as rollback would have been if they had actually been implemented. Overall, however, he presents a thoughtful, well-informed, nuanced, and highly readable analysis. In the end, he recommends that conservatives today confront what he regards as Obama's accommodationism with a renewed hawkish US nationalism, albeit one tempered with a more truly conservative (as opposed to visionary or transformational) realism. Summing Up: Recommended. All readership levels. M. F. Farrell Ripon College