Secrets of State

This book is a history of the State Department but, more broadly, of the American foreign policymaking process. It narrates the development of both the decision-making institutions and the content of policy from the founding of the republic through the administration of President Ronald Reagan. Few understand how the American system of international policy is different from that of virtually every other country in the world nor, indeed, how it works at all.
The American system is a pluralist...