This book critiques U.S. foreign policy since 1920 by showing how moralistic diplomacy has increasingly assumed Faustian overtones.

Joan Hoff is the former CEO and President of the Center for the Study of the Presidency in New York City, former Executive Secretary of the Organization of American Historians, and former Professor of History and Director of the Contemporary History Institute at Ohio University. She is now Research Professor of History at Montana State University, Bozeman.

Introduction: foundations of U.S. Faustian foreign policy; 1. America forms and refines its diplomacy; 2. The impact of World War I on U.S. diplomacy; 3. Faustian aspects of prosperity, depression, and war; 4. Faustian aspects of U.S. Cold War foreign policy; 5. Cold War transformation of the American presidency; 6. The United States adrift in the post-Cold War world; 7. Flaunting U.S. Faustian foreign policy; Epilogue: the legacy of George W. Bush.