America's shift from isolationism to internationalism can be a difficult transition to understand. The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations provides a good foundation for developing the understanding that is necessary to see why the United States acts as it does today.

While there are areas of this book that would benefit from some discussion of domestic affairs, specifically surrounding the League of Nations and a couple of other instances, the text is geared toward understanding what was going on in terms of the actions of the United States with respect to the rest of the world. However, this necessitates a paradigm that foreign relations are conducted in a vacuum with respect to domestic affairs.

As a general survey of the time period, this book does a good job, but there are elements that could improve the nature of the text.