'Pfaff sets forth a Eurocentric, or, perhaps better, Europhiliac, case for American isolationism. He attempts to explain “how the American century ends”—and ends up suggesting that the American experiment itself may be drawing to a close. Although it might thus seem that his book belongs to the decline-and-fall genre of literature, for Pfaff the American instance is less a matter of a fall from greatness than a morning-after hangover following a binge of imperialistic self-delusion.'