Barack Obama, arguably America's least experienced president since Abraham Lincoln, is barely finished with his first two years in office. Yet he has already been tested abroad far more than most of his more seasoned predecessors, and by a portfolio of challenges as complex and dangerous as any ever faced by an American president.

Frank Loy, a widely respected former under secretary of state in the Clinton administration and an early supporter and adviser to Obama, takes stock of the president’s handling of these challenges and finds that the president is pioneering an “ambitious realism” that “deftly mixes high ambition, caution, and pragmatism.” Read More