Memoirs by George F. Kennan
Charles Francis Adams - an Autobiography
Fear God And Take Your Own Part by Theodore Roosevelt
Anti-Americanism by Jean-Francois Revel
Seize The Moment: America's Challenge In A One-Superpower World by Richard Nixon
Those are recent reads of mine on the topic of the United States and international diplomacy, specifically how it has been molded from our early days to our current unusual situation. Kennan was the author of the "Long Telegram" which detailed the Containment doctrine. Adams was the son of John Quincy Adams whose public life ran from Napoleon in Russia (his father was the U.S. ambassador at the time) to answering a letter from Marx to Lincoln. The book by Roosevelt is out of print but details his post-presidential views on pre-WWI events, when the U.S. was taking its baby steps into the world of the Great Powers. It's kind of amusing to read him cursing Wilson, of all people, for isolationism. The Nixon book is a stunner, written shortly before his death - people forget the man's international vision.
So many books, so little time. Paul Johnson's History Of The American People is brilliant. It's only partly about foreign relations but worth the effort. I'd demur on Paul Kennedy - his doctrine of Imperial Overstretch proclaimed our impotence in the face of the Soviet Union shortly before we won the Cold War. Caveat emptor.
"So many books, so little time."
Ain't that always the truth!