Introduction : the Bildungsroman of empire -- Seeing like a world power : the German-American synthesis -- Realism before "realism" : geopolitics in the interwar Atlantic -- Carl Schmitt's practice of imperial comparison in the 1930s and 40s -- The making of a realist : Wilhelm Grewe in the Third Reich -- Geopolitics : death and rebirth of an Atlantic tradition during World War II -- An American power politics : Hans Morgenthau and the making of a realist orthodoxy, 1940-1960 -- Realism's crisis and restoration : West Germany, 1954-85.