Samantha Power’s new memoir, The Education of an Idealist, is an important and engaging work that should be widely read — especially by those of us who disagree with her. It deftly conveys the linkage between personal biography and political belief, showing Power not as a wily imperialist villain but a committed liberal whose consistent focus on human rights has nonetheless led her to embrace perpetual empire.

This distinction matters because Power’s political causes — atrocity prevention, support for subjugated minorities, international human rights — should be championed by all decent people. Yet her flawed prescriptions — particularly “humanitarian intervention” by the world’s most powerful military — help maintain US dominance in the world and often undermine the very principles they profess to defend.

With its adoration of the military and praise for the neutrality of “public service,” the memoir raises serious questions about contemporary liberalism’s ability to check antidemocratic trends. Power’s idealistic view of governmental bureaucracy sidesteps a necessary debate about complicity with Trumpian injustice — a striking blind spot for one of the world’s leading experts on genocide.