A sweeping and authoritative narrative, The Long Road to Baghdad places the Iraq War in the context of U.S. foreign policy since Vietnam, casting the conflict as a chapter in a much broader story of American diplomatic and military moves in the region. Diplomatic historian Lloyd Gardner explains the Iraq War as the necessary outcome of a half-century of doomed U.S. policies. The Long Road to Baghdad is essential reading, with sobering implications for a positive resolution of the present quagmire.