The Great Delusion

“A thought-provoking and bleak worldview.”—Gideon Rachmann, Financial Times (A Financial Times Best Book of 2018)

“Provocative and timely.”—John Gray, Literary Review

“This book produces a much needed theoretical contribution which apart from taking to new heights the liberal/realist debate also brings to the forefront the influence of nationalism. […] a very comprehensive and instructive text” —Arshid Iqbal Dar, Asian Affairs

“Among post-Cold War treatises, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics remains unsurpassed in its command of the historical record. Mearsheimer’s most recent book, The Great Delusion, poses more urgent questions about the present.”—Thomas Meaney, London Review of Books

Winner of the the James Madison Award, sponsored by the American Political Science Association

“This is the best of the many books that seek to explain how and why American foreign policy has gone so disastrously wrong. Mearsheimer hits the sweet spot where theory meets the chaos of today’s world.“—Stephen Kinzer, author of The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War

“John Mearsheimer’s The Great Delusion is policy-relevant scholarship at its best: a summation of a leading scholar’s accumulated thinking about international relations theory and American foreign policy.“—Christopher Layne, University Distinguished Professor of International Affairs, Texas A&M University

“Liberal states have many virtues, but The Great Delusion explains, with rigorous logic and admirable clarity, why their efforts to spread their values are usually doomed to fail. Both liberal crusaders and unrepentant realists have much to learn from this compelling book.”—Stephen Walt, Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

“Idealists as well as realists need to read this systematic tour de force. Even if you don’t agree, it will discipline your own thinking.“—Robert D. Kaplan, author of The Return of Marco Polo’s World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-First Century

John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. His many books include Conventional Deterrence. He lives in Chicago, IL.

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