Publishers Weekly review:

"Democracy, until recently, was an anomaly in a landscape of monarchies, dictatorships and empires; its critics — including America's founding fathers — associated it with mob rule and demagogic tyranny. In this engaging treatise, Mandelbaum explains how the modern democratic fusion of popular sovereignty — i.e., majority rule — with individual liberty came to dominate the world's polities. His first reason is straightforward: democracy works. Democratic nations, he notes, especially the flagship democracies of Britain and the U.S., are wealthier, stronger and more stable and inspire other countries to emulate them. His second, more provocative explanation, is that the modern spread of free markets provides a "school for democracy" by establishing private property (the fundamental liberty), respect for law, civil society, organized economic interests as the forerunners of political parties, and the habit of settling differences by negotiation and compromise rather than violence....Readers will find a lucid, accessible blend of history, political science and sociology, with a wealth of fresh insights into the making of the contemporary world."

In this path-breaking and controversial book, Mandelbaum shows how this remarkable role evolved even though neither the U.S. nor any other country sought to establish it, and how countries, even those most critical of American policies, tacitly accept it. He describes the contributions that American power makes to global security, noting that the most important of them are the least controversial and receive the least attention. He identifies both the many American contributions to global prosperity and the dangers to the health of the international economy posed by the nation's energy policies and the worldwide role of the dollar. And he shows how the foreign policy innovations of both the Clinton and Bush administrations, which are unusually thought to be polar opposites, in fact closely resemble each other.

With wisdom and vision, The Case For Goliath analyzes the ways in which other countries have come to accept, resent and exert influence on America's global role, and it assesses the uncertain prospects for sharing the burden of global governance more widely, through a multilateral approach to international security and the management of the global economy.

(Source: Public Affairs)

(Source: Perseus Books)