Some readers will come to Rachel Maddow’s first book expecting an entertaining left-wing screed against the military. They may be surprised to discover instead a lively but serious argument about American history.

Fox News fans will be taken aback to find a blurb from none other than Roger Ailes, that conservative channel’s creator, declaring that “Drift” offers “valid arguments” and is “a book worth reading.” Meanwhile, devotees of Maddow’s liberal MSNBC show may raise their eyebrows at her declaration that “my generation of veterans” is “a huge part of why I’m bullish on America’s capacity to adapt, lead and succeed in the 21st century.”

If the book lures readers briefly from their political silos, it will be because Maddow’s thesis crosses ideological lines. Like the Tea Partiers, she believes that the United States must return to the lost principles of the nation’s founders — in this case a suspicion of standing armies and a deep reluctance to go to war. “America’s structural disinclination toward war is not a sign that something’s gone wrong,” she declares. “It’s the way the founders set us up.”