Category: Featured Book Reviews

Review by Jon P. Dorschner Packing for India by David Mulford, Potomac Books: Dulles, Virginia, 2014, ISBN 978-I-61234-715-8, 338 pp., $29.95 (Hardcover), $21.08 (Kindle). I wanted to read and review this book because Ambassador Mulford and I served together in … Read more

Review by Amb. (ret.) Edward Marks The State Department Boys: Philippine Diplomacy and Its American Heritage by Marciano R. de Borja, Vellum Press, 2014, ISBN-13: 978-0991504787, 388 pp., Hardcover $38.00. Paperback $22.75 The State Department Boys is actually three studies … Read more

Review by Joe B. Johnson Back Channel to Cuba by William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh, The University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, NC, ISBN-13: 978-1469617633, 2014, 544 pp., $19.24 (Kindle), $25.82 (Hardcover). The highest-level official meeting of American … Read more

Review by Amb. (ret.) Brian E. Carlson American Ambassadors: The Past Present and Future of America’s Diplomats by Dennis C. Jett, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, ISBN-13: 978-1137395665, 300 pp. including appendices, $34.29 (Hardcover) When it comes to ambassadors, there are dueling … Read more

Review by Amb. (ret.) Michael W. Cotter World Order, by Henry Kissinger, Penguin Press: New York, N.Y., 2014, ISBN-13: 978-1-59420-614-6, 374 pp. $21.60 (Hardcover), $18.99 (Kindle) A major challenge for writers explaining current events for general audiences is to provide … Read more

Review by Amb. (ret.) Anthony Quainton Confronting Political Islam: Six Lessons from the West’s Past by John M. Owen IV, Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 2014, ISBN: 978-0691163147, e-book ISBN: 978-1400852154, 232 pp., Hardcover $29.95, e-book available on Kindle and … Read more

Review by Dr. John M. Handley, Vice President, American Diplomacy Publishers Mission Creep: The Militarization of US Foreign Policy? Edited by Gordon Adams and Shoon Murray, Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2014. ISBN 13: 978-1-62616-114-6, pp. 264 (end-notes plus references, … Read more

Review by Ambassador (ret.) Herman J. Cohen Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa by Piero Gleijeses University of North Carolina Press, 2013, ISBN-13 978-1469609683, 672 pp., Hardcover $40.00, Amazon hardcover $32.00, Kindle $18.19. The … Read more

Review by Dr. John H. Brown William Zimmerman, Ruling Russia: Authoritarianism from the Revolution to Putin, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2014 ISBN: 978-0-691-16148-8 Hardcover, 329 pp., $29.95 William Zimmerman, professor emeritus of political science at the University of … Read more

Review by James L. Abrahamson Conservative Internationalism: Armed Diplomacy under Jefferson, Polk, Truman, and Reagan by Henry R. Nau, Princeton University Press: Princeton and Oxford, 2013, ISBN 978-0-691-15931-7, xiii, 321 pp., $35.00 Hardcover, also available as an e-book. Dr. Henry … Read more

Review by Amb. (ret.) William A. Rugh America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East by Hugh Wilford, New York: Basic Books, ISBN;13: 978-0465019656, 2013-14, pp.384, $21.45 (Amazon Hardcover), $16.15 (Kindle). History professor … Read more

Review by David T. Jones The Morning After: The 1995 Quebec Referendum and The Day That Almost Was by Chantal Hebert with Jean Lapierre, Alfred A Knopf Canada, 2014, ISBN-13: 978-0345807625, 320 pp., $21.74 (Hardcover), $12.79 (Kindle). The Morning After … Read more

Review by Jon P. Dorschner         Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War by C. Christine Fair, Oxford University Press: New York, 2014, ISBN 13: 978-0-19-989270-9, 368 pp., $34.95 (Hardcover), $13.49 (Kindle). C. Christine Fair, an Assistant Professor … Read more

Review by Ted Wilkinson Pot Shards: Fragments of a Life Lived in CIA, the White House and the Two Koreas by Donald Gregg, New Academia Publishing, 2014, ISBN-13: 978-0990447115, 332 pages, $38.00 (Hardcover), $26.00 (Paperback), $7.99 (Kindle). Apart from its … Read more

Review by Amb. (ret.) Tony Quainton The Congress of Vienna and its Legacy: War and Great Power Diplomacy after Napoleon by Mark Jarrett, I.B. Tauris Publishers, 2014, ISBN-13: 978-1780761169, 522 pp.,  $117.17 (Hardcover), $22.31 (Paperback), $31.02 (E-Textbook). The outbreak of … Read more

Review by Amb. (ret.) Joe O. Rogers Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations, by Zheng Wang, New York: Columbia University Press, 2012, ISBN-13: 978-0231148900, 312 pp., $29.25 (Hardcover), $23.75 (Paperback), $13.99 (Kindle). Zheng Wang … Read more

Review by Paul Levine We Are Like Scattered Sand: 200 Million Migrant Workers in China by Haiao-Hung Pai, Verso: New York and London, 2013, ISBN-13: 978-1781680902, 320 pp., $20.64 (Hardcover), $15.69 (Paperback),     $9.99 (Kindle). Anyone who has attended a … Read more

Review by Amb. (ret.) David C. Litt Hard Choices by Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014, ISBN-13: 978-1476751443, 656 pp., $20.91 (Harcover), $14.99 (Kindle). This review of Hard Choices, Hillary Clinton’s memoir of her time at the … Read more

Reviews by Amb. (Ret.) Anthony C. E. Quainton [On this 100th anniversary of the beginning of  “the war to end all wars”, we will feature books that touch on that subject in this and future issues.   We begin with Ambassador … Read more

Review by Jon P. Dorschner Capitalism (A Ghost Story) by Arundhati Roy, Haymarket Books: Chicago, Illinois, 2014, ISBN 978-160846-385-5, 128 pp., $14.95 (Paperback), $9.99 (Kindle). Time Magazine recently named Arundhati Roy, a leading Indian intellectual and social critic, as one … Read more