Seeing Red: Russian Propaganda and American News by Sarah Oates and Gordon Neil Ramsay
Climate Justice: What Rich Nations Owe The World- And the Future by Cass R. Sunstein
On Xi Jinping: How Xi’s Marxist Nationalism is Shaping China and the World by Kevin Rudd
The Enduring Hold of Islam in Turkey: The Revival of the Religious Orders and Rise of Erdogan by David S. Tonge
Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History by Vali Nasr
Seeing Red: Russian Propaganda and American News
By Sarah Oates and Gordon Neil Ramsay
Oxford University Press, June 2024
216 Pages
Seeing Red breaks new ground in investigating the scope of Russian disinformation, arguing that . . . politicians and media. . . in the United States have facilitated the dissemination of Russian propaganda. From the 2020 elections to the Capitol Insurrection to the war in Ukraine, Sarah Oates and Gordon Neil Ramsay examine the penetration of key Kremlin strategic narratives that attempt to project Russian power, blame NATO for Russian aggression, and attack democracy via the U.S. news. Despite knowledge of the risk and resourceful work on tracking down Russian propaganda in the United States, the problem of foreign disinformation continues to this day. As Oates and Ramsay argue, this is in part due to exploitation of the American tradition of free speech and the open nature of the U.S. media system. . . .
REVIEWS
“Seeing Red provides an essential primer on the spread of foreign propaganda in American political discourse. Using a set of analytical tools designed to track the presence of Russian-based narratives in U.S. news, Oates and Ramsay demonstrate that Russian and far right domestic narratives use the same key words and phrases to undermine the credibility of American political institutions” — Vivian S. Walker, former executive director of the U.S. Commission on Public Diplomacy and Chair of The Foreign Service Journal Executive Board
“Oates and Ramsay deliver a damning, evidence-based diagnosis of both the virus of Russian propaganda, and the catastrophically weakened immune system that allowed it to infect America’s media and politics – an invaluable guide for those who want to solve the problem, rather than wallow in it.” — Samuel Greene, Professor of Russian Politics, King’s College London
“. . . Despite the pernicious impact of Russia’s interference on U.S. and West European elections over the past decade, effective measures to prevent such interference remain elusive. This book will help journalists, government officials, and concerned citizens understand the alarming scale of the problem and the steps that need to be taken to safeguard American democracy against Kremlin intrusions.” — Mark Kramer, Director of the Cold War Studies Project at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University
“In this excellently researched and written book, the authors offer timely insight into how Russian “strategic narratives” infiltrate and spread in an American information sphere increasingly dominated and divided by walled gardens of politically homogeneous content. . . .” — M. S. Gorham, CHOICE
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Sarah Oates is Associate Dean for Research and Professor at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park. As a political scientist, her work focuses on how the media can support or subvert democracy in places as diverse as Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Dr. Oates has published many books, articles, chapters, and papers on various topics, including how the internet can challenge dictatorship, how election coverage varies in different countries, and how national media systems cover terrorism in distinctive ways. A former journalist, she has lived and taught in the United States, Scotland, and Russia.
Gordon Neil Ramsay is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Akureyri, Iceland. His work has covered political communication and disinformation, as well as media regulation and the effects of the decline of local journalism in democratic societies. He co-founded the Centre for the Study of Media, Communication and Power at King’s College London. His recent publications have covered the media’s role in elections, the effects of market concentration and economic pressures on local news performance, and the increasing vulnerability of news media to targeted disinformation.
Climate Justice: What Rich Nations Owe The World- And the Future
By Cass R. Sunstein
The MIT Press, February 2025
213 Pages
In Climate Justice, a bracing challenge to status-quo thinking on the ethics of climate change, renowned author and legal scholar Cass Sunstein clearly frames what’s at stake and lays out the moral imperative: When it comes to climate change, everyone must be counted equally, regardless of when they live or where they live—which means that wealthy nations, which have disproportionately benefited from greenhouse gas emissions, are obliged to help future generations and people in poor nations that are particularly vulnerable.
Invoking principles of corrective justice and distributive justice, Sunstein argues that rich countries should pay for the harms that they have caused and that all of us are obliged to take steps to protect future generations from serious climate-related damage. He shows how “choice engines,” informed by artificial intelligence, can enable people to save money and to reduce the harms they produce. The book casts new light on the “social cost of carbon,” the most important number in climate change debates—and explains how intergenerational neutrality and international neutrality can help all nations, above all the United States and China, do what must be done.
REVIEWS
“. . . Reading Climate Justice at this moment, when the administration is doing all it can to ramp up fossil fuel emissions and end humanitarian aid to poorer countries, is unsettling. The book feels like a postcard from a time, deep in the past and yet only weeks ago, when the officials at the helm of our government understood the gravity of global leadership, cared about our neighbors, and dealt in facts….Climate change is still a global crisis, growing more urgent by the day. Inevitably, the time will come when the United States will be forced to wake up and choose to lead the world to climate solutions by example. . . .”—the Washington Post Book World
“This book is quintessential Sunstein: engaging prose, wise insights, useful parables, and crucial policy context, all on the important topic of how the world effectively and equitably addresses climate change.”
—Catherine Wolfram, William Barton Rogers Professor inEnergy and Applied Economics, MIT Sloan
“Climate Justice compellingly argues for a cosmopolitan approach to climate change, in which rich nations take seriously the harms they have inflicted on poor nations and respect future generations’ interests as much as our own.”
—Lisa Heinzerling, Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center; coauthor of Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing
“Cass Sunstein’s masterful book provides a top-level policy briefing on climate change policy coupled with an insightful examination of diverse ethical challenges. Climate Justice is the one book that everyone engaged in climate change policy must read.”
—W. Kip Viscusi, University Distinguished Professor of Law, Economics, and Management, Vanderbilt University; author of Pricing Lives: Guideposts for a Safer Society
“Scholarly excellence. Sunstein’s analysis is always unbendingly rigorous. But Climate Justice subjects Sunstein’s own prior views to such scrutiny and embraces a strikingly new view of the primacy of “rough justice” in addressing climate change.”
—Richard J. Lazarus, Charles Stebbins Fairchild Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; author of The Making of Environmental Law
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cass R. Sunstein is Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard University, where he is the cofounder and codirector of the Initiative on Artificial Intelligence and the Law. Former Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, he is the author of The Cost-Benefit Revolution, How Change Happens, Too Much Information, Sludge (all published by the MIT Press), Nudge (with Richard H. Thaler), How to Become Famous, and other books.
On Xi Jinping: How Xi’s Marxist Nationalism is Shaping China and the World
By Kevin Rudd
Oxford University Press, September 2024
610 Pages
Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd provides an authoritative account of the ideological worldview driving Chinese behavior both domestically and on the world stage–that of President Xi Jinping, who now holds near-total control over the Chinese Communist Party and is, in effect, president-for-life. Rudd argues that Xi’s worldview differs significantly from those of the leaders who preceded him, and that this ideological shift is reflected in the real world of Chinese policy and behaviour.
According to Rudd, Xi’s notion of Leninism has taken the party and Chinese politics further to the left in comparison to his predecessors. Also, his Marxism has also taken Chinese economic thinking to the left-in a more decisively more statist direction and away from the historical dynamism of the private sector. However, Chinese nationalism under Xi has moved further to the right- towards a much, harder-edged, foreign policy vision of China and a new determination to change the international status quo. . . These changes in worldview are also reflected in Xi’s broader rehabilitation of the concept of “struggle” as a legitimate concept for the conduct of both Chinese domestic and foreign policy–a struggle that need not necessarily always be peaceful. . . Xi’s ideological worldview also exhibits a new level of nationalist self-confidence about China’s future–derived from China’s historical and civilizational strengths but reinforced by his Marxist-Leninist concept of historical determinism and the belief that the tides of history are now on firmly China’s side.
REVIEWS
“Understanding Xi Jinping, his plans for China, and how they will affect the world, is the central challenge for the United States and policymakers everywhere. As a foreign policy practitioner, a scholar, a Chinese language speaker, and a former world leader himself, Kevin Rudd is uniquely well placed to answer the question of what Xi Jinping actually believes. He does so brilliantly by drawing on Chinese primary sources, in-depth research, and a lifetime of experience dealing with China’s leadership.” — Stephen J. Hadley, National Security Advisor to President George W. Bus
“Understanding Xi Jinping’s worldview and what it means for China and us, is more crucial now than ever. Rudd’s superb analysis provides the reader with a comprehensive guide to Xi’s thinking on domestic policy and global affairs. Rudd takes Xi’s words seriously and teases out the consequences: a politics and economics that has moved to the left and a foreign policy that has turned to a form of rightist nationalism. Rudd encapsulates these processes with the phrase ‘Marist-Leninist Nationalism.’ This work is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding where China has come from, where it is heading and the consequences for all of us.” — Anthony J. Saich, Daewoo Professor of International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School
“Public servant, prime minister, diplomat, scholar–Kevin Rudd’s resume is also a stellar CV for the elite caste of scholar-bureaucrats that managed the Chinese empire for over a millennium. On Xi Jinping focuses the experience of a political practitioner engaged with China since his teenage years to analyse Xi Jinping’s Party Empire and its global ambitions. Rudd also attempts the seemingly impossible by offering words of guidance and hope in this darkling age.” — Geremie R. Barmé, editor of the China Heritage
“In this book, Kevin Rudd provides all who care about peace a huge service. Drawing on his extraordinary knowledge of China and the Chinese system, Rudd reveals a side of Xi Jinping only comprehensible through his extensive ideological writings–giving us all unique insights into a man upon whom much of the future depends and helping scholars and policymakers alike better understand Xiâs motives and anticipate his actions. A remarkable read!” — Meghan L. O’Sullivan, Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Jeane Kirpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs, Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kevin Rudd is former Prime Minister and former Foreign Minister of Australia. He is also former President of the Asia Society and the current Australian Ambassador to the United States. He has a PhD in politics from Oxford University and is the author of The Avoidable War (2022), among other books.
The Enduring Hold of Islam in Turkey: The Revival of the Religious Orders and Rise of Erdogan
By David S. Tonge
Hurst, January 2025
384 Pages
A new history of modern Turkey, focusing on its fifty-year retreat from Kemalist secularism.
Given its determined program of secularizing the people both under and after the Ataturk regime, Turkey is often projected as a model for the compatibility of Islam with parliamentary democracy. In this absorbing book, journalist and writer David S. Tonge reveals the limitations of that secularization, and its progressive reversal, in what continues to be a profoundly religious country. He describes how Muslim Turks’ religious identity has been taken over by branches of one of Islam’s great religious orders, the Naqshbandis, whose profoundly anti-Western ethos was honed by British and French colonial incursions into the heartland of their faith.
Tonge’s history offers a salutary alternative to the wishful narrative developed by Western chancelleries during the Cold War, one which viewed Turkey as a westernizing democracy. The revival of both Turkish nationalism and Islam helped President Erdogan’s rise to power, and will shape the regime that succeeds him–illuminating and understanding Turkey’s realities of faith and religious politics has never been more important.
REVIEWS
“Tonge is convincing in his conclusion that the religious orders are a permanent feature of Turkish politics and public life.” — Foreign Affairs
“Few outsiders are as qualified as Tonge to have written a contemporary history of Islam in Turkey. His book provides extraordinary insight into the religious underpinnings of Turkish society and politics. In the oft-bewildering era of Erdo?an, this puts a lot of things in their place. This is bound to be a precious resource for scholars of Islam, and of Turkey, for years to come.” — Jon Lee Anderson, staff writer, The New Yorker
“Meticulously researched and beautifully written, in clear and lively prose. This traces the history of the opaque religious communities who continue to hold real sway to this day-but whose influence is often under-appreciated by outside observers.” — Laura Pitel, former Ankara correspondent, Financial Times
“An unparalleled exploration of the intricate relationship between Islam and the socio-political landscape of Turkey. A must-read for scholars, students and anyone interested in the dynamic interplay between religion and state in a rapidly changing world.” — Ahmet Erdi Ozturk, Associate Professor in International Relations and Politics, London Metropolitan University
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David S. Tonge has lived half of his life in Turkey. A scholar of Magdalene College, University of Cambridge, he reported from Ankara and Athens for the BBC, Guardian and Observer, then from London as the Financial Times’ diplomatic correspondent.
Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History
By Vali Nasr
Princeton University Press, May 2025
395 Pages
A gripping account that overturns simplistic portrayals of Iran as a theocratic pariah state, revealing how its strategic moves on the world stage are driven by two pervasive threats—external aggression and internal dissolution
Drawing on memoirs, oral histories, and original in-depth interviews with Iranian decision makers, Nasr brings to light facts and events in Iran’s political history that have been overlooked until now. He traces the roots of Iran’s strategic outlook to its experiences over the past four decades of war with Iraq in the 1980s and the subsequent American containment of Iran, invasion of Iraq in 2003, and posture toward Iran thereafter. Nasr reveals how these experiences have shaped a geopolitical outlook driven by pervasive fear of America and its plans for the Middle East.
Challenging the notion that Iran’s foreign policy simply reflects its revolutionary values or theocratic government, Iran’s Grand Strategy provides invaluable new insights into what Iran wants and why, explaining the country’s resistance to the United States, its nuclear ambitions, and its pursuit of influence and proxies across the Middle East.
REVIEWS
“A masterful account of Iran’s grand strategy from the revolution through to the present day. Vali Nasr dispels the notion that Iran is motivated primarily by ideology or theology and instead writes a sophisticated account of a state that has developed a grand strategy based on the legacy of colonialism and the drive for independence and security. Nasr makes a compelling case that places Iran’s dedication to resisting US power over several decades in this broader framework.”—Leslie Vinjamuri, SOAS University of London
“Vali Nasr’s pathbreaking book provides a history of the Islamic Republic from the inside out, taking readers into the mental framework of Iran’s leaders as they navigate one crisis after another. Even experts will be startled by what Nasr reveals in this essential blueprint for understanding Iran.”—Robert D. Kaplan, author of The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China
“An indispensable analysis of Iranian grand strategy under the ayatollahs. Nasr shows how regional strategic considerations decide the outcome of Iranian policy and how concerned the leaders are with subversion at home.”—Odd Arne Westad, author of The Cold War: A World History —
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vali Nasr is the Majid Khadduri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. His books include The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat, The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future, and (with Ali Gheissari) Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty. His writing has appeared in leading publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Affairs.
The World After Gaza: A History
By Pankaj Mishra
Penguin Press, February 2025
301 Pages
The postwar global order was in many ways shaped in response to the Holocaust. That event became the benchmark for atrocity, and, in the Western imagination, the paradigmatic genocide. Its memory orients so much of our thinking, and crucially, forms the basic justification for Israel’s right first to establish itself and then to defend itself. But in many parts of the world, ravaged by other conflicts and experiences of mass slaughter, the Holocaust’s singularity is not always taken for granted, even when its hideous atrocity is. Outside of the West, Pankaj Mishra argues, the dominant story of the twentieth century is that of decolonization.
The World After Gaza takes the current war, and the polarized reaction to it, as the starting point for a broad reevaluation of two competing narratives of the last century: the Global North’s triumphant account of victory over totalitarianism and the spread of liberal capitalism, and the Global South’s hopeful vision of racial equality and freedom from colonial rule. At a moment when the world’s balance of power is shifting, and the Global North no longer commands ultimate authority, it is critically important that we understand how and why the two halves of the world are failing to talk to each other.
. . . In this concise, powerful, and pointed treatise, Mishra reckons with the fundamental questions posed by our present crisis — about whether some lives matter more than others, how identity is constructed, and what the role of the nation-state ought to be.
REVIEWS
“Stimulating and brilliantly researched . . . no incendiary polemic, but rather a sober and extensively documented treatise on the discursive history that has given rise to the current situation.” —The Irish Times
“Mishra’s book is a triumphant work of empathy in a polarizing conflict. It gives voice and extends sympathy and probes the innermost fears and aspirations of both parties in the conflict — and shows how fine the line is between humanity and its opposite.” —Anand Giridharadas, The.Ink
. . . At heart, this is an exhaustively sourced plea for historical literacy that opens up what Mishra calls ‘a broader vista of human fraternity and solidarity’ and recognizes that across the globe, people victimized by ‘historical mass crimes of genocide, slavery and racist imperialism’ wonder why ‘their own holocausts . . . have not been much regarded in history.’ . . . A clear-eyed look at the Holocaust as justification for Israel’s wars.” —Kirkus
“Both a timeless and timely book, reading The World After Gaza feels like engaging in an ongoing conversation about the meaning of the Holocaust and colonialism with a good attentive friend.” —Eyal Weizman, author of Forensic Architecture
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Pankaj Mishra is the author of Age of Anger: A History of the Present, From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia, and several other books of nonfiction and fiction. Mishra won the 2024 Weston International Award, as well as the 2014 Windham–Campbell Prize for nonfiction. He writes regularly for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, and The London Review of Books, among others.