In The End of Ambition, Steven A. Cook charts the course of the United States' encounter with the Middle East from the mid-twentieth century through the present day. Looking back, Cook makes a bold claim: the U.S. was-despite setbacks and moral costs-spectacularly successful. That record of achievement began to unravel in the early 1990s when policymakers embarked upon a set of overly ambitious policies to remake the Middle East. Cook highlights that calls
to withdraw from the region are rash given the important interests the U.S. maintains in the region. Yet, he also underscores how those interests are changing and explores alternatives to America's current approach to the Middle East against the backdrop of political uncertainty in the United States and a
changing global order.