The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris Audiobook

Quotes

• “Why do we succumb to hubris? Peter Beinart has written a highly intelligent and wonderfully readable book that answers the question by looking at a century of American foreign policy. As with everything Beinart writes, it is lucid, thoughtful, and strikingly honest.”

  — Fareed Zakaria, author of The Post-American World

• “The Icarus Syndrome is not of course the first study of America’s tendency toward imperial temptations, but it is one of the best, and certainly one of the best researched and best written. Since the cyclical pattern he traces is as pertinent today as it was in the eras of Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Johnson, this is very much a book with a message: a cautionary message to avoid hubris and to recognize the messy reality of world politics.”

  — Paul Kennedy, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

• “Energetically researched and entertainingly written, Peter Beinart’s The Icarus Syndrome is both a fascinating intellectual history and an important coming-of-age parable about his generation’s hard-learned lesson in the limits of American power.”

  — Jane Mayer, author of The Dark Side

• “The Icarus Syndrome is a confident and contentious history of more than a century of American foreign policy and its recurring tragic flaws. Agree or not with all of Peter Beinart’s specific interpretations, one can only admire his effort to understand the cycles of modern American diplomacy and statecraft, and his timely warning about the temptations of pride.”

  — Sean Wilentz, author of The Age of Reagan

• “With this perceptive and provocative book, Peter Beinart has given us a compelling argument about our times. The Icarus Syndrome does what works of history and journalism do at their very best: use the past to illuminate, in often stark and surprising ways, the challenges of the present. This is an important book.”

  — Jon Meacham, author of American Lion

• “Peter Beinart has written a vivid, empathetic, and convincing history of the men and ideas that have shaped the ambitions of American foreign policy during the last century—a story in which human fallibility and idealism flow together. The story continues, of course, and so his book is not only timely, it is indispensable.”

  — Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars

• “A highly readable and useful hundred-year account of American ventures abroad that can serve as a path to understanding past failures and uncovering why policy renewal is now proving so elusive…[Beinart’s] thesis is not new, but it is indefatigably rendered: America’s shortcomings flow entirely from hubris or overconfidence, much as the mythical Icarus perished because he flew too near the sun.”

  — New York Times

• “An insightful and enjoyable…account of the ideas and individuals that have animated America’s global ambitions over the past century…Underscores how many of the best-known and most respected intellectuals either despaired at their lack of influence, watched their ideas get twisted beyond recognition or found themselves abandoned precisely at the moment when their insights could have mattered most. The Icarus Syndrome should be required reading for all [George] Kennan wannabes and aspiring Washington wonks. Its lesson: Abandon hope all ye who theorize here.”

  — Washington Post

• “A brief for moderation, good sense, humility, and looking before leaping—virtues that merit Beinart’s spirited, cogent defense.”

  — Publishers Weekly