From the fall of the Berlin Wall to the fall of the Twin Towers, this is the story of how successive US administrations struggled to understand the changing world.This intensely-researched book is the definitive account of one of the most overlooked and misunderstood eras in recent US history: the 12 years after the Cold War was definitively won. These years passed in a haze of self-congratulation, economic boom, Clintonian grand theatre, Republican confusion and angst, and ended with a stunning catastrophe on September 11 2001. With that, many Americans woke from their torpor and began to focus on the world and its challenges. But how did the US fail to notice that it had created newly implacable enemies in the world, able and determined to do harm on a spectacular scale?Derek Chollet and James Goldgeier blend deep expertise and experience in government and politics at the highest levels. This has allowed them broad access to both parties' political and policy establishments to ask those who served at the time how much they were aware that the post-Cold War dream was about to become a very bitter reality. Their analysis - which finds some surprising common ground between the Clinton and George W Bush foreign policies - will provoke many people.This book shows that history did not begin on 9/11, just as it did not end on 11/9. In fact, the roots of all of the current challenges America confronts - Iraq, Islamic extremism, North Korea and Iran's nuclear programmes, efforts to rebuild failed states such as Afghanistan, the Middle East peace process, ethnic conflicts and genocides, economic globalization - stretch back to the period that began with the end of the Cold War in 1989 and the intense Washington political struggles over what to do about them. This book is the story of how the events, people and ideas of that period shaped the politics and policies of today and tomorrow.