Christopher Dietrich:
"Making the Unipolar Moment is an impressive work of historical research, analysis, and interpretation. It is also an indispensable resource that points towards areas of new inquiry for scholars who seek to understand the central debates about structure, strategy, and power in U.S. foreign relations."
William Inboden, author of Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945–1960:
"Hal Brands now stands as one of our foremost scholars and strategic thinkers. In this strikingly original book, he combines new archival research and strategic acumen to offer a fresh and compelling interpretation of America's unexpected transition from global declension to hegemonic unipolarity. Along the way he illumines new insights about the Reagan and Bush presidencies, and about the complex interplay between geopolitical trends, structural forces, and visionary leadership. To read this book is to come to a new appreciation of history, strategy, and statecraft."
Melvyn P. Leffler, author of For the Soul of Mankind:
"Hal Brands has written an extraordinarily important book showing how strategy and structure interacted in the international arena in the 1980s and early 1990s. Without overlooking the deficiencies in U.S. strategy and the 'blowback' effects of some Reagan initiatives, Brands skillfully highlights how well-conceived policies exploited basic trends like democratization and globalization to catapult the United States to unprecedented power. This book is indispensable for understanding the evolution of U.S. foreign policy during the last half century."
J. R. Clardie:
"In attempting to explain the rise of US power from the late 1970s to early 1990s, Brands (Duke Univ.) focuses on the balance between structural changes in global politics and strategic decisions by US leaders. In the debate between structure and agency, the book reaches the conclusion that they are both integral in explaining complex international events. The book is engaging and well researched. It is a valuable contribution to the literature on this important era and relevant to current debates about America's role in the world. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty."
Walter Russell Mead:
"Hal Brands has catapulted into the foremost ranks of a new generation of U.S. strategic thinkers."
Jeremi Suri, Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, author of Liberty's Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building from the Founders to Obama:
"If one wants a narrative of American international behavior in the last two decades of the Cold War, Making the Unipolar Moment is the best I have seen so far. This is a very provocative, well-written, and deeply researched book that covers a transformative period in American power, 1970–1991, with an epilogue that reaches beyond 2001. Hal Brands narrates the rise of American power from perceived decline. Drawing on numerous new American archival sources from presidential libraries and repositories of personal papers, Brands incorporates economic and human rights issues with military, diplomatic, and political topics."
Tom Nichols:
"There are lot of books about the Cold War, and a lot of books about 'the state of the mess we're in.’ There are books about globalization, about failed states, and about America’s relations with the various parts of the world. "What’s missing, however, is a book about how we got here: how the United States went from a superpower on the rocks in the 1970s to a supreme power dominating a unipolar world in the 1990s. That’s why I’ve been fascinated with Hal Brands’ new book. If you want to see how far we came from the edge of ruin—and how far we’re falling from the achievements of the 1990s—this carefully researched book is essential reading."
Robert J. McMahon, Ralph D. Mershon Distinguished Professor of HistoryThe Ohio State University, author of The Limits of Empire: The United States and Southeast Asia since World War II:
"Making the Unipolar Moment is outstanding. Hal Brands demonstrates that large structural forces reshaped the international environment in a direction beneficial to the interests of the United States, even during the seeming nadir of the late 1970s. He shows how U.S. strategy harnessed those structural forces and abetted them, creating the conditions for America's unipolar moment. The themes emphasized here are highly original and rest on impressively deep and wide-ranging research. Brands's analysis of the interplay between structure and agency is a singular strength."
