In The End of Ambi­tion: America’s Past, Present, and Future in the Mid­dle East, Steven A. Cook traces the tra­jec­to­ry of the Unit­ed States’ involve­ment in the Mid­dle East from the mid-20th cen­tu­ry through the present day. Through an engag­ing nar­ra­tive enriched by his two decades of first­hand expe­ri­ence liv­ing, work­ing, and writ­ing about the Mid­dle East, Cook exam­ines the roots of the U.S.-Israel rela­tion­ship, draw­ing on his Jew­ish iden­ti­ty to pro­vide a nuanced per­spec­tive. Reflect­ing on this his­to­ry, Cook makes a bold claim: Wash­ing­ton was — despite set­backs and moral costs — spec­tac­u­lar­ly suc­cess­ful. That record of achieve­ment began to unrav­el in the ear­ly 1990s when pol­i­cy­mak­ers embarked upon a set of over­ly ambi­tious poli­cies to remake the Mid­dle East. Address­ing the U.S. response to Hamas’ Octo­ber 7th attack and cri­tiques of the Biden administration’s approach from Israel’s detrac­tors, Cook out­lines a path for­ward — one that seeks to place bilat­er­al ties on a firmer foun­da­tion amid the shift­ing pol­i­tics of the spe­cial relationship.