Wars and Peace is a historical look at how Americans have tried to conceptualize peace during five national security crises: the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. David Mayers examines the intellectual foundations of U.S. foreign policy since 1861 and analyzes the way that Americans, across the political spectrum and in times of conflict, have conceptualized the eras that would follow hostilities.

Mayers looks at history in terms of a current problem: How should the United States fashion its policy in the post-Cold War world? In this volume Mayers gives voice to a range of people who have acted on the political scene - the powerful but also the marginalized, the vanquished, the dissenting - to show how Americans of all stripes and persuasions have flavored national discourse.