U.S. Strategy in the Asian Century: Empowering Allies and Partners
By Abraham M Denmark
U.S. Strategy in the Asian Century offers vital perspective on the future of power dynamics in the Indo-Pacific, focusing on the critical roles that American allies and partners can play. Abraham M. Denmark argues that these alliances and partnerships represent indispensable strategic assets for the United States. They will be necessary in any effort by Washington to compete with China, promote prosperity, and preserve a liberal order in the Indo-Pacific. Blending academic rigor and practical policy experience, Denmark analyzes the future of major-power competition in the region, with an eye toward American security interests. He details a pragmatic approach for the United States to harness the power of its allies and partners to ensure long-term regional stability and successfully navigate the complexities of the new era.
REVIEWS
Few have examined in detail what kind of policies the United States should adopt toward its treaty allies in Asia and how to do so. U.S. Strategy in the Asian Century does so expertly, filling a big gap in the current policy debate.
— M. Taylor Fravel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
At a time of profound geo-political change and increasing competition in the Indo-Pacific, Abraham Denmark offers a compelling strategy for protecting vital U.S. economic and security interests in the region: Use all of the instruments of our power ― diplomatic, economic, military, and our “soft” power ― to engage and empower our regional allies and partners to shore up the foundations of the regional order. This insightful book is a must-read for scholars and practitioners alike.
— Michèle Flournoy, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Abraham M. Denmark is director of the Asia Program and a senior fellow at the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and an adjunct associate professor in the Security Studies Program of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia. In January 2017, he received the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service.
America in the World: A History of U.S. Diplomacy and Foreign Policy
By Robert B. Zoellick
Recounting the actors and events of U.S. foreign policy, Zoellick identifies five traditions that have emerged from America’s encounters with the world: the importance of North America; the special roles trading, transnational, and technological relations play in defining ties with others; changing attitudes toward alliances and ways of ordering connections among states; the need for public support, especially through Congress; and the belief that American policy should serve a larger purpose. These traditions frame a closing review of post-Cold War presidencies, which Zoellick foresees serving as guideposts for the future.
Both a sweeping work of history and an insightful guide to U.S. diplomacy past and present, America in the World serves as an informative companion and practical adviser to readers seeking to understand the strategic and immediate challenges of U.S. foreign policy during an era of transformation.
REVIEWS
“This book is so sweeping and insightful that it will revive the art of diplomatic history. Robert Zoellick emphasizes America’s pragmatic instincts, from Benjamin Franklin to George H.W. Bush, as well as the key role that technology and trade have played in furthering our influence. In addition to being a fascinating historic narrative, this book provides a great framework for understanding our role in the world today.”
—Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci
“Few people understand statecraft or have practiced it as adroitly as Robert Zoellick. His new book, AMERICA IN THE WORLD, examines the history of U.S. diplomacy and the emphasis our nation’s diplomats have placed on pragmatic results over theoretical approaches. As we march into the uncertain future of a multipolar world, Zoellick successfully argues that this tradition will be critical for the country to maintain its place on the world stage.”
― James A. Baker, III, 61st U.S. Secretary of State
“One of America’s preeminent statesmen offers a masterful survey of American diplomacy, its practitioners, and its traditions. Full of rich narrative and sharp insights, this is an essential guide to steer the ship of American diplomacy in a more complicated, crowded, and competitive international landscape.”
―Ambassador William J. Burns, President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former Deputy Secretary of State
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert Zoellick has served as Deputy Secretary of State, U.S. Trade Representative, and President of the World Bank. Earlier in his career, Zoellick served as Counselor to the Secretary of the Treasury and Deputy Chief of Staff at the White House and Assistant to President George W. Bush. Zoellick is now a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III
By Peter Baker and Susan Glasser
For a quarter-century, from the end of Watergate to the aftermath of the Cold War, no Republican won the presidency without his help or ran the White House without his advice. James Addison Baker III was the indispensable man for four presidents because he understood better than anyone how to make Washington work at a time when America was shaping events around the world. The Man Who Ran Washington is a page-turning portrait of a power broker who influenced America’s destiny for generations.
He led Gerald Ford’s campaign and would go on to manage a total of five presidential races and win a sixth for George W. Bush in a Florida recount. He ran Ronald Reagan’s White House and became the most consequential secretary of state since Henry Kissinger. He negotiated with Democrats at home and Soviets abroad, rewrote the tax code, assembled the coalition that won the Gulf War, brokered the reunification of Germany and helped bring a decades-long nuclear superpower standoff to an end. Ruthlessly partisan during campaign season, Baker governed as the avatar of pragmatism over purity and deal-making over division, a lost art in today’s fractured nation.
His story is a case study in the acquisition, exercise, and preservation of power in late twentieth-century America and the story of Washington and the world in the modern era–how it once worked and how it has transformed into an era of gridlock and polarization. This masterly biography by two brilliant observers of the American political scene is destined to become a classic.
REVIEWS
“Nobody was better at getting things done than James A. Baker. In a book that is at once fascinating, coolly revealing, and at moments touching, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser have given us a biography worthy of one of the most important figures of the late American Century. If you want to understand power in Washington—or anywhere, for that matter—this is the book for you.”
—Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, authors of The Wise Men
“Peter Baker and Susan Glasser’s The Man Who Ran Washington is an erudite, searching, affectionate biography. Showcasing elegant writing, critical detachment, and encyclopedic knowledge of U.S. presidential history, every page glows with excellence. It’s an epic study of how one brazen Texan married the crude American political power dynamic with old-fashioned velvet diplomacy to help win the Cold War. A stunning achievement!”
—Douglas Brinkley, author of American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race
“The Man Who Ran Washington is a must-read tour de force of political history and biography. Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, two of our best journalists and scholars, bring us the life of one of the nation’s most important secretaries of state and presidential counselors, showing James Baker near the center of more than thirty years of important American and world history.”
—Michael Beschloss, author of Presidents of War
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, a political analyst for MSNBC, and author of Days of Fire and The Breach. Susan Glasser is a staff writer for The New Yorker and author of its weekly “Letter from Trump’s Washington” as well as a CNN global affairs analyst. Their first assignment as a married couple was as Moscow bureau chiefs for The Washington Post, after which they wrote Kremlin Rising.
Away From Chaos: The Middle East and the Challenge to the West
By Gilles Kepel, translated by Henry Randolph
Away from Chaos is a sweeping political history of four decades of Middle East conflict and its worldwide ramifications. Gilles Kepel, called “France’s most famous scholar of Islam” by the New York Times, offers a clear and persuasive narrative of the long-term causes of tension while seamlessly incorporating on-the-ground observations and personal experiences from the people who lived through them.
From the Yom Kippur/Ramadan war of 1973 to the aftermath of the Arab Spring, Away from Chaos weaves together the various threads that run through Middle East politics and ties them to their implications on the global stage. With keen insight stemming from decades of experience in the region, Kepel puts these chaotic decades in perspective and illuminates their underlying dynamics. He also considers the prospects of emerging from this long-lasting turmoil and for the people of the Middle East and the world to achieve a more stable future.
REVIEWS
Gilles Kepel has long been France’s most sophisticated scholar of radical Islam, and Away from Chaos is his personal and political summa―a remarkable synthesis of decades of passionate engagement with the Middle East.
— Robert F. Worth, The New York Times Magazine
Gilles Kepel has lived the torment of the modern Middle East as a scholar and, ultimately, as a target of the jihadists. In Away from Chaos, he narrates that tortured story and proposes a return for the steadying forces of a century ago―the European nations, a rising Russia, and the internal balancers of the Levant whose destiny is to bridge East and West.
— David Ignatius, Washington Post
In Away from Chaos, Gilles Kepel, one of the world’s most prominent scholars of Middle Eastern politics, provides a grand narrative of this region’s history over the last four decades, explaining the rise and possible end of Islamism as a mobilizing force. Relying on his deep personal engagement with the Middle East and also with Islam in Europe, Kepel masterfully charts the region’s upheavals and their grave implications for the West. What emerges is an intimate and deeply learned portrait―the culmination of a lifetime of study and sympathetic observation.
— Bernard Haykel, Princeton University
An excellent primer for anyone wanting to get up to speed on the region…devoid of the crippling ideological blinders that sometimes disfigure books about a part of the world so rife with ideology.
— Michael J. Totten, The New York Times
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gilles Kepel is chair of Middle East and Mediterranean studies at the Université Paris Sciences et Lettres and director of the Middle Eastern Mediterranean Freethinking Platform at the Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano. He is the author of many widely acclaimed books, including, most recently translated into English, Terror in France: The Rise of Jihad in the West (2017).
Last Letters: The Prison Correspondence, 1944-45
By Freya and Helmuth James von Moltke
Edited by Helmuth Caspar von Moltke, Dorothea von Moltke, and Johannes von Moltke
Translated by Shelley Frisch, afterword by Rachel Seiffert
Available for the first time in English, a moving prison correspondence between a husband and wife who resisted the Nazis.
Tegel prison, Berlin, in the fall of 1944. Helmuth James von Moltke is awaiting trial for his leading role in the Kreisau Circle, one of the most important German resistance groups against the Nazis. By a near miracle, the prison chaplain at Tegel is Harald Poelchau, a friend and coconspirator of Helmuth and his wife, Freya. From Helmuth’s arrival at Tegel in late September 1944 until the day of his execution by the Nazis on January 23, 1945, Poelchau would carry Helmuth’s and Freya’s letters in and out of prison daily, risking his own life. Freya would safeguard these letters for the rest of her long life. Last Letters is a profoundly personal record of the couple’s fortitude in the face of fascism.
REVIEWS
“Last Letters documents what the Song of Songs calls ‘love as strong as death,’ or even stronger: the unbreakable connection between two courageous people who managed to maintain faith and love in nearly unimaginable circumstances.”
—Elaine Pagels
“These letters form an extraordinary zone of light in the darkest of times. The writers think lucidly and eloquently about who they are and where they are, and by the extension about who we are or might be, if we care enough about humanity to stand firm against its worst abusers. An unforgettable book.”
—Michael G. Wood
“Any tale of brave resistance to political tyranny elicits profound admiration. But told through the intimate correspondence of a wife and her husband, this one acquires an extraordinary vitality and poignancy. Here we witness at close quarters the human costs of courage and its more-than-human springs. The sight is achingly, commandingly beautiful.”
—Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology, University of Oxford
“Bombs are falling, the Russian front is closing in, and the Nazi law machine grinds along, preparing cases, examining witnesses, churning out death sentences. In the midst of this destruction takes place the extraordinary leave-taking between Freya and Helmuth James von Moltke recorded in this volume. Through their letters, full of desperate humanity, they find a deeper personal connection, in defiance of the regime that seeks to crush them.”
—Martin Puchner, author of The Written World and editor of The Norton Anthology of World Literature
“[F]illed with love and soul-searching, honest attempts to sift through their fears and understand their fates, and, increasingly, to find solace in their strong Christian faith.”
—Danna Harman, Haaretz
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
In 1935, after turning down an opportunity to become a judge because the job would require him to join the Nazi party, Helmuth James von Moltke (1907-1945) began a practice of his own in Berlin that helped Jews and other persecuted peoples emigrate from Germany. In 1939, von Moltke was drafted into the German counter-intelligence service. He soon became a leader of those opposed to the Nazi party, leading to his eventual arrest and execution.
Freya von Moltke (1911-2010) was part of the anti-Nazi opposition group, the Kreisau Circle, which she helped to form with her husband Helmuth. After World War II, Freya left Germany and settled in South Africa with her two sons. Unable to tolerate Apartheid, however, Freya returned to Berlin in 1956 and eventually settled in Norwich, Vermont, where she lived until her death.
Helmuth Caspar von Moltke is a retired lawyer and the son of Freya and Helmuth von Moltke. He lives in Vermont, Quebec, and Berlin.
Johannes von Molkte is a professor of German and Film, Media and Television at the University of Michigan and the grandson of Freya and Helmuth von Moltke.
Dorothea von Molke is co-owner of Labyrinth Books in Princeton, NJ, and the granddaughter of Freyaand Helmuth von Moltke.
Shelley Frisch is an award-winning translator of German literature. She lives in Princeton, NJ.
Rachel Seiffert is a British novelist and short story writer.
Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda
By John Maxwell Hamilton
Manipulating the Masses tells the story of the enduring threat to American democracy that arose out of World War I: the establishment of pervasive, systematic propaganda as an instrument of the state. During the Great War, the federal government exercised unprecedented power to shape the views and attitudes of American citizens. Its agent for this was the Committee on Public Information (CPI), established by President Woodrow Wilson one week after the United States entered the war in April 1917.
Driven by its fiery chief, George Creel, the CPI…established the first national newspaper, made prepackaged news a quotidian aspect of governing, and pioneered the concept of public diplomacy…
Even as Creel insisted that the CPI was a conduit for reliable, fact-based information, the office regularly sanitized news, distorted facts, and played on emotions. Creel extolled transparency but established front organizations. Overseas, the CPI secretly subsidized news organs and bribed journalists. At home, it challenged the loyalty of those who occasionally questioned its tactics. Working closely with federal intelligence agencies eager to sniff out subversives and stifle dissent, the CPI was an accomplice to the Wilson administration’s trampling of civil liberties.
John Maxwell Hamilton consulted over 150 archival collections in the United States and Europe to write this revealing history, which shows the shortcuts to open, honest debate that even well-meaning propagandists take to bend others to their views. Every element of contemporary government propaganda has antecedents in the CPI. It is the ideal vehicle for understanding the rise of propaganda, its methods of operation, and the threat it poses to democracy.
REVIEWS
This highly-readable, meticulously researched book examines the origins of modern U.S. propaganda, as refined in the Twentieth Century… Professor Hamilton rings a warning bell that all should hear about the dangers that propaganda, whether from abroad or within our own land, continues to hold for the future of America’s open society.
— Loch Johnson, Regents Professor Emeritus of International Affairs, University of Georgia
An instant classic. This stunning history of the origins of American propaganda and the information state unveils the threat to self-government that’s been with us since World War I.
— Thomas E. Patterson, Bradlee Professor of Government & the Press, Harvard University
Manipulating the Masses brilliantly tells the story of President Woodrow Wilson’s 1916 re-election campaign and how Wilson used the same techniques to shape public opinion when he took the country into World War I and created the Committee on Public Information. Every public affairs office in government today as well as the private sector’s public relations industry owe their birth to Wilson’s CPI and what was done there.
— Charlie Cook, Editor and Publisher, “The Cook Political Report”
There are fewer more important obligations of government in a democracy than to keep citizens informed and to tell the truth. . . John Maxwell Hamilton’s volume recalls the history of a seminal failure. It should open our eyes to shortcomings in what we get as “public information” and ask us all to demand better from our nation’s leaders.
— Mike McCurry, Former White House and State Department spokesman; Professor and Director, Public Theology at Wesley Theological Seminary
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Maxwell Hamilton, a former journalist and government official, is the Hopkins P. Breazeale LSU Foundation Professor of Journalism in the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University and a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. He has authored and edited many books, including Journalism’s Roving Eye, winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize.
Lie Machines: How to Save Democracy from Troll Armies, Deceitful Robots, Junk News Operations, and Political Operatives
By Philip N. Howard
We live in a world of technologies that misdirect our attention, poison our political conversations, and jeopardize our democracies. With massive amounts of social media and public polling data, and in-depth interviews with political consultants, bot writers, and journalists, Philip N. Howard offers ways to take these “lie machines” apart.
Lie Machines is full of riveting behind-the-scenes stories from the world’s biggest and most damagingly successful misinformation initiatives—including those used in Brexit and U.S. elections. Howard not only shows how these campaigns evolved from older propaganda operations but also exposes their new powers, gives us insight into their effectiveness, and explains how to shut them down.
REVIEWS
“Lie Machines is an important account of the corruption of online information flows, offering up a bounty of lively, action-oriented reflections on the vulnerabilities inherent in today’s digital communications architecture.”
—Jonathan Zittrain, George Bemis Professor of International Law and Professor of Computer Science, Harvard University
“Lie Machines presents Howard’s cutting-edge research on disinformation and computational propaganda in a vivid, compelling manner. The book is a tour de force analysis of grave threats to democracy, and how to defuse them.”
— Frank Pasquale, author of The Black Box Society
“Lie Machines takes on one of the great challenges of the digital age. Refusing to wallow in the dystopia of it all, Howard produces a must-read for the moment and a blueprint for the future.”
—David Kaye, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Philip N. Howard is director of the Oxford Internet Institute and the author of nine books, including Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up, which was praised in the Financial Times as “timely and important.” He is a frequent commentator on the impact of technology on political life, contributing to the New York Times, Financial Times, and other media outlets.
Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency
By Mark Lynas
Rigorously cataloguing the very latest climate science, Mark Lynas explores the course we have set for Earth over the next century and beyond. Degree by terrifying degree, he charts the likely consequences of global heating and the ensuing climate catastrophe.
At one degree – the world we are already living in – vast wildfires scorch California and Australia, while monster hurricanes devastate coastal cities. At two degrees the Arctic ice cap melts away, and coral reefs disappear from the tropics. At three, the world begins to run out of food, threatening millions with starvation. At four, large areas of the globe are too hot for human habitation, erasing entire nations and turning billions into climate refugees. At five, the planet is warmer than for 55 million years, while at six degrees a mass extinction of unparalleled proportions sweeps the planet, even raising the threat of the end of all life on Earth.
These escalating consequences can still be avoided, but time is running out. We must largely stop burning fossil fuels within a decade if we are to save the coral reefs and the Arctic. If we fail, then we risk crossing tipping points that could push global climate chaos out of humanity’s control.
REVIEWS
‘Mark Lynas…has time-travelled into our terrifying collective future…Go with him on this breathtaking, beautifully told journey…I promise that you will come back…determined to alter the course of history.’
— Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything
‘Scientists predict that global temperatures will rise by between one and six degrees over the course of this century and Mark Lynas paints a chilling, degree-by-degree picture of the devastation likely to ensue unless we act now … a rousing and vivid plea to choose a different future’
— Daily Mail
‘An apocalyptic primer of what to expect as the world heats up…it’s sobering stuff and shaming too. Despite its sound scientific background, the book resembles one of those vivid medieval paintings depicting sinners getting their just desserts’
— Financial Times
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark Lynas is a journalist, campaigner and author of several books on the environment, including High Tide (2004), Six Degrees (2007), The God Species (2011), Nuclear 2.0 (2013) and Seeds of Science (2018). He has written for CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Times, the Guardian and is a visiting fellow with the Alliance for Science at Cornell University, New York. He lives in Herefordshire, England.