When blogging about books in D.C., you tend to receive more press releases about political non-fiction than any other genre — so much that it starts to make you cynical. Most of the books read like armchair quarterbacking with an unhealthy dose of rhetoric. But Matthew Yglesias' book, Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats, manages to break out of that mold. Yglesias, an associate editor at The Atlantic and one of the most recognizable names in the blogosphere, has put together an intelligent analysis of foreign policy that really stresses the shortcomings of both parties, instead of glossing over problems on the left and villifying the right. The independent voter in us loves that kind of stuff. We were able to chat with Yglesias recently about the book, the presidential election and what's next.

You mentioned in your introduction that you always thought your first book would be about blogging. What ultimately made you decide to write this book, about foreign policy, instead?

I should clarify — I always thought my first book would be about blogging because that's what other people seemed to be interested in having me write about. But to me it always made more sense to try to write a book about one of the topics I cover on my blog and in my magazine writing which, especially before the book process itself made me somewhat sick of the subject, was focused a lot on the substantive and political issues around U.S. foreign policy. Why that focus? Well, because I felt like I had a point of view on these questions that was pretty widespread (albeit in different forms) among both a lot of rank-and-file liberals and a lot of expert analysts but that had come to be terribly underrepresented in the media, so it was a gap I thought I could fill.

The book takes readers through a history of foreign policy and the liberal foreign policy strategy from as far back as World War II. How long did it take you to compile and sort through all that information? Did you ever worry that by the time the book published, the landscape was going to be a lot different than when you went into the project?

The research for the book didn't take as long as it might have since most of the ground I'd covered was actually stuff I'd written about previously, either as articles for the American Prospect or as things on my blog. Obviously, some additional research needed to be done and I wanted to reacquaint myself with things I'd read previously (going back to college, etc., beyond my professional work) but it was mostly a question of figuring out how I wanted to structure the argument. But of course all things considered there's a long gap from when I started working on the proposal to when the book actually came out (including months when the book was totally finished, but just not available for purchase) so you worry about things getting stale. I think it mostly worked out OK, but I believe there's a reference to Hillary Clinton as the Democratic frontrunner.

Speaking of the candidates, John McCain has spoken out against setting timetables in Iraq and has said that it could take a hundred years for us to finish the mission. In the book, you also mention Clinton's particularly hawkish stances. With recent polls showing a close matchup between McCain and either Democratic opponent, have we bought into this Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics, that "anything can be accomplished, as long as we don't give up"?

Well, I don't know if "we" have, but John McCain certainly has — in his essay for Foreign Affairs magazine he echoes the suggestion from George W. Bush's second inaugural that if we just put our minds to it we can somewhat stamp out autocracy all around the world. This is, of course, nonsense — the United States of America is substantially more powerful than any other individual country, but there are very real limits on what we can achieve.

You spend some time in the book describing the events leading up to the Iraq war, especially what seemed to be the Democratic strategy of avoiding dissent and attacking the anti-war wing of the party instead. A lot of criticism was leveled at the press and politicians for not asking the administration crucial questions during that period, and since then Iraq has received plenty of attention in the media. But why haven't Americans heard more about the current state of Afghanistan and the administration's mission there (besides rare bits and pieces from exceptional news outlets)? Has it been written off as a neo-conservative success despite the obvious problems in the region?

For Afghanistan, much like in the pre-war buildup to Iraq, you see that the press basically follows the politicians. For better or for worse, The New York Times and CNN aren't going to be a substitute for an opposition party. When congressional Democrats didn't seriously challenge the administration's case for war in Iraq, neither did the press. Nobody in the Democratic Party is quite sure at the moment of what they want to say about Afghanistan, so as a result nobody says very much and the press is disinclined to look too closely at it. And in fairness to the reporters who've been covering Afghanistan, the tendency is for what coverage does come out of there to basically get ignored here in the U.S. since it's very far away and not part of a partisan dispute in our domestic politics.

You've had some speaking engagements recently, including one at the New America Foundation earlier this week. What has the reaction been to your book?

I like to think the reaction's been pretty good! Of course, I suppose you get a selection bias at these events because people who hate me probably won't show up in the first place. I do think the reviews I've gotten even in conservative magazines have tended to be respectful, albeit critical.

Are you planning on writing another book or are you going to take some time off and just focus on writing your blog for The Atlantic?

Well I'd certainly like to write another book at some point but for the immediate future I'm going to work on my day job, see what happens in the election, and probably think about new major projects once it's clearer what direction the country's heading in.

Matthew Yglesias will appear at Politics and Prose on Sunday, May 18 at 5 p.m. to read from and discuss Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats.