To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power
What would it feel like To Run the World? The Soviet rulers spent the Cold War trying desperately to find out. In this panoramic new history of the conflict that defined the postwar era, Sergey Radchenko provides an unprecedented deep dive into the psychology of the Kremlin’s decision-making. He reveals how the Soviet struggle with the…
Homelands: A Personal History of Europe
Timothy Garton Ash, Europe’s “historian of the present,” has been “breathing Europe” for the last half century. In Homelands he embarks on a journey in time and space around the postwar continent, drawing on his own notes from many great events, giving vivid firsthand accounts of its leading actors, revisiting the places where its history…
Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise
From the jury: Overreach is a masterful analysis of the leading contemporary challenge in geopolitics by a long-time close observer of China. Shirk’s analysis of the vulnerability of the regime is provocative, plausible, and full of pragmatic potential for policymakers. She skillfully answers two critical questions for managing the “China problem”: how did we get…
The American War in Afghanistan
From the Jury: “After two decades and four presidential administrations, America finally ended its war in Afghanistan. There is little doubt about the outcome: the United States spent twenty years pouring blood, sweat and treasure into a frustrating and complex war — one that it ultimately lost. In The American War in Afghanistan: A History,…
Trade Wars are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace
Trade disputes are usually understood as conflicts between countries with competing national interests, but as Matthew C. Klein and Michael Pettis show, they are often the unexpected result of domestic political choices to serve the interests of the rich at the expense of workers and ordinary retirees. Klein and Pettis trace the origins of today’s…
The Light that Failed: A Reckoning
This book, full of sparkling insight and subtle analysis, explains why liberal democracy failed to become a universal ideology despite its victory over communism. The authors show how Western triumphalism of the 1990s failed to take into account the distinctive history and culture of states that were seeking to imitate and embed democracy. Although the…