Paths to Power reviews the literature on American diplomacy in the early Republic and in the age of Manifest Destiny, on American imperialism in the late nineteenth century and in the age of Roosevelt and Taft, on war and peace in the Wilsonian era, on foreign policy in the Republican ascendency of the 1920s, and on the origins of World War II in Europe and the Pacific. The result is a comprehensive assessment of the current literature that serves as a useful primer for students and scholars of American foreign relations.