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Robert Vitalis tells a great story about how he came to write this book. Some years ago, sitting in the Clark University Library, avoiding grading his students' final exams,

he pulled an old history of the university off the shelf.

Clark played a key role in the birth of the field of international relations in the two decades before the First World War he read,

especially by founding and supporting one of the new disciplines flagship journals,

the Journal of Race Development.

That can't be right, he thought.

Some more digging told him that it was.

The Journal of Race Development, established in 1910,

was one of a spate of academic journals, associations, and institutes

founded as American social scientists came

to grips with their country's expanding global and imperial role. The journal's title,

Jarring Today, reflects perfectly the centrality of the category of race to political science at the time.

During the Wilsonian moment of 1919, the journal was rechristened the Journal of

International Relations without much disturbing its contributors or character. A few years after that,

it was bought and renamed again by a New York-based association of internationalist businessmen,

officials, and academics, the Council on Foreign Relations.

Yes, that's right, it became Foreign Affairs, the preeminent journal of the foreign policy establishment.

This is just one of the startling and illuminating genealogies Vitalis pieced together during the 10 years or more he spent researching this book.

White World Order Black Power Politics does two things. First, it provides a critical history

of the institutional development of the field of international relations in the United States,

from its founding at the turn of the century through to the

...