Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power - Softcover

"This is the inside history of our time, told with precision and confidence by an author who knows where the secrets are kept—and also that the most powerful and dangerous weapon in Washington, D.C., is a new idea."
—THomas E. Ricks, author of Fiasco: THe American military adventure in iraq and making the corps

"Fred Kaplan has long been one of our most incisive thinkers about strategic issues. In this provocative book, he challenges many of our assumptions about the post-9/11 world and offers a dose of realism about the way the world actually works after the end of the Cold War. It's a bracing read."
—Walter Isaacson, author of Einstein and The Wise Men

"In his Slate chronicles through the Iraq War years, Fred Kaplan consistenly outshone other analysts with his explanation of what was going wrong, and why. In this engrossing and completely new work, he tells the story of the little-known theorists who have shaped much of the world's recent history. For me this book was full of revelations."
—James fallows, national correspondent, the atlantic monthly

"With a series of deft, highly readable and utterly fair strokes, Fred Kaplan has collared George W. Bush's quest for absolute power and universal values. And by hanging those failed ideas up there for all to see, Kaplan gives the next president running room to pursue a sensible foreign policy."
—Leslie h. gelb, president-emeritus of the council on foreign relations and former columnist for the new york times

"Fred Kaplan's Daydream Believers takes us to the years before 9/11 and shows that the misguided concepts and looney tunes of George Bush's failed war on terror had its beginnings long before Osama bin Laden came on the scene. Their political concepts, Kaplan tells us, are little more than science fiction, as practiced in the Oval Office."
—Seymour M. Hersh, author of Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib

"An engaging account of the inner workings of a decision-making process which could be viewed as comical but for its tragic consequences."
—Zbigniew Brzezinski, author of Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower

"Illuminating . . . incisive." —The New York Times

"A lively and entertaining—if occasionally horrifying—read. . . . Like a master archaeologist who can see through the shards and stones of a dig to reconstruct the culture of the city below, Kaplan lays out all the failures, omissions, and delusions of Bush administration officials. The result is an account of the pathologies . . . of Washington itself . . . a caution about the limits of purely military power and the dangers of seeing the world as a morality play."

—Washington Post Book World

"Excellent and devastating. . . . Go, please, and buy Kaplan's book. His great work deserves attention and reward."

—Joe Klein, Time

"The inside history of our time, told with precision and confidence, by an author who knows where the secrets are kept."

—Thomas E. Ricks, author of Fiasco

"For me, this book was full of revelations." —James Fallows, national correspondent, The Atlantic

The disasters of American foreign policy these last eight years are well known. Why they happened continues to puzzle many. How to repair the damage is the biggest challenge the next president will face. In Daydream Believers, celebrated Slate columnist Fred Kaplan—"one of our most incisive thinkers about strategic issues," according to Walter Isaacson—combines in-depth reporting and razor-sharp analysis to explain just how America got so far off track. Kaplan traces the origins of these catastrophic ideas, how they developed from as far back as fifty years ago, and how our next leaders can awake from the daydreams and see the world as it is.