Inderjeet Parmar reveals the complex interrelations, shared mindsets, and collaborative efforts of influential public and private organizations in the building of American hegemony. Focusing on the involvement of the Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller foundations in U.S. foreign affairs, he traces the transformation of America from an "isolationist" nation into the world's sole superpower, all in the name of benevolent stewardship. Parmar begins his study in the 1920s with the establishment of these foundations and their system of top-down, elitist, scientific giving, which focused more on managing social, political, and economic change than on solving modern society's structural problems. He recounts how American intellectuals, academics, and policy makers affiliated with these organizations institutionalized such elitism, which then bled into the machinery of twentieth-century? U.S. foreign policy and became regarded as the essence of modernity.