| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Great Experiment: The Story of Ancient Empires, Modern States, and the Quest for a Global Nation. By Strobe Talbott. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008. xiv, 478 pp. $30.00, ISBN 978-0-7432-9408-9.)
This is a rather personal book, by an individual who has had a significant career in journalism, then a stint in the Bill Clinton administration (as undersecretary of state, 1994–2001), followed now by leadership of the Brookings Institution. The author, Strobe Talbott, is erudite and humane, the kind of globalist who began to flower amid liberal American hopes for the United Nations in the late 1940s and who seeks to keep the flame alive today. His book is a generous appeal for a new start, in the context of those ideals, after the disastrous administration of the second President Bush.	1
The book divides into three parts, not vigorously integrated, though joined by Talbott's consistent interest in ideas and systems that can unite people beyond the national level. Historians may find particular interest in part 3, where Talbott probes the Clinton administration and the undoing of Clinton's efforts by his successor (though Talbott acknowledges that the George W. Bush administration generated some initiatives that were less bad than others). Talbott's portrayal of Clinton's basic global intentions, including his recognition that the president became more explicit on the subject after his administration, and his discussion of specific crises, particularly in the former Yugoslavia, provide interesting material.	. . .

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