One of the first modern historians to integrate economic realities into the study of American foreign policy, William Appleman Williams has been a diplomatic historian of major influence since the first publication of The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. In this pioneering book, "the man who has really put the counter-tradition together in its modern form" (Saturday Review) examines the profound contradictions between America's ideals and its uses of its vast power, from the Open Door Notes of 1898 to the Bay of Pigs and the Vietnam War.