WALTER A. McDOUGALL is a professor of history and the Alloy-Ansin Professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a senior fellow at Philadelphia's Foreign Policy Research Institute, where he edited Orbis: A Journal of World Affairs. He is a prolific author whose works include Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History 1585?1828, Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era 1829?1877, and most recently The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy: How American Civil Religion Betrayed the National Interest. His book ...the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for History.