A Diplomatic History of the American People

Bailey exhaustively details diplomacy and foreign policy issues throughout the history of the United States up until the latest years included in each edition. Most university history professors or fellow authors, as well as Bailey himself, consider this the most important work of his literary career. Bailey chronicles the research, writing, and difficulty in finding a publisher for this book in his autobiography, The American Pageant Revisited. The average reader may be overwhelmed with using this daunting volume in a one semester university-level Foreign Policy or Diplomacy course. However, this work is second to none in terms of quality and detail, which make it a highly-sought, highly-used work in such situations. Students as well as instructors may wish to supplement this, or even use this as a supplement, with Thomas Patterson's two-volume American Foreign Policy or the memoirs or official biographies of any relevant figures, especially modern figures such as Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon. More advanced or more interested students may wish to follow up on the sources Bailey uses to comprise the bulk of his narrative. Nonetheless, this remains a seminal and irreplaceable work for use in the classroom, in research papers or as the groundwork for a book on foreign policy or diplomatic concerns.

An outstanding historical overview of American foreign policy and individual Secretaries of State and the presidential policies they worked from (or at cross purposes with). Easy-to-read, it is written for the layman, not the academic.I learned things I'd never heard of before, such as the fact that the United States once had troops occupying part of Russia! During the intervention of 1918, Europeans and America went in to support the White Russians and help quell the chaos during the early Russian Revolution. Also that in early American history our relationship with Canada was anything but friendly. There were shooting incidents between Americans and Canadians partly over border disputes and partly over Canadian fears of American invasion.

I have used this book in college and for preparing high school classes. I find the explanation of historical events to be clear and systematic. The supplemental charts are easy to follow. I recommend this book for finding good explanations for the events that the United States was involved in and about the key players at the time.