American Foreign

Strategic planning needs to be a more integral part of America's foreign policymaking. While thousands of troops are engaged in combat and homeland security concerns abound, long-term coordination of goals and resources would seem to be of paramount importance. A change in presidential administration brings the hope that strategic planning will play an elevated role in U.S. foreign policy. Can policy planners - in the Pentagon, State Department, Treasury, NSC, and National Intelligence Council - rise to the challenge?

Schmitz illuminates how the policies FDR pursued in response to the crises of the 1930s transformed Americans' thinking about their place in the world. He shows how the president developed an interlocking set of ideas that prompted a debate between isolationism and preparedness, guided the United States into World War II, and mobilized support for the war while establishing a sense of responsibility for the postwar world.

America's most distinguished commentator on foreign policy, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, offers a reasoned but unsparing assessment of the last three presidential administrations' foreign policy. Though spanning less than two decades, these administrations covered a vitally important turning point in world history: the period in which the United States, having emerged from the cold war with unprecedented power and prestige, managed to squander both in a remarkably short time.

The cutthroat world of international politics has always been dominated by great powers. Yet no great power in the modern era has ever managed to achieve the kind of invulnerability that comes from being completely supreme in its own neighborhood. No great power, that is, except one—the United States. In We May Dominate the World, Sean A. Mirski tells the riveting story of how the United States became a regional hegemon in the century following the Civil War.

In Abroad: American Expats that Thrive Personally and Professionally Living in Foreign Countries, you will read nine uniquely inspiring chapters written by eight expat entrepreneurs currently living outside of their home countries. Authors have committed to sharing their stories, including their ups and downs, in order to encourage others interested in moving abroad to ultimately take the leap.

American Presidents in Diplomacy and War chronicles the major foreign policy crises faced by twelve American presidents in order to uncover the reoccurring patterns of successful and less successful uses of diplomatic, economic, and military power. In this book, Thomas R. Parker reveals how America's most successful leaders manage events instead of allowing events to control them.

Meena Menon was The Hindu's correspondent in Islamabad till she was expelled by the Pakistani authorities in May 2014. In spite of her truncated stay and the restrictions placed on her movements, Menon managed to write on a range of subjects covering swathes of life in Islamabad.

It has become axiomatic to contend that U.S. foreign policy must adapt to an era of renewed "great-power competition." The United States went on a quarter-century strategic detour after the Cold War, the argument goes, basking in triumphalism and getting bogged down in the Middle East. Now China and Russia are increasingly challenging its influence and undercutting the order it has led since 1945. How should it respond to these two formidable authoritarian powers?

For years, one group of Americans has worked as foot-soldiers for the most authoritarian regimes around the planet. In the process, they've not only entrenched dictatorships and spread kleptocratic networks, but they've secretly guided U.S. policy without the rest of America even being aware. And now, some of them have begun turning their sights on American democracy itself. These Americans are known as foreign lobbyists, and many of them spent years ushering dictatorships directly into the halls of Washington, all while laundering the reputations of the most heinous regimes in the process.

The United States is in the midst of a substantial and long-term national project, which is proceeding in fits and starts, to reorient its foreign policy to the East. The central tenet of this policy shift, aka the Pivot, is that the United States will need to do more with and in the Asia-Pacific hemisphere to help revitalize its own economy, to realize the full potential of the region's dramatic innovation, and to keep the peace in the world's most dynamic region, where the lion's share of the history of the 21st century will be written.

It used to be that ravaging another country’s economy required blockading its ports and laying siege to its cities. Now all it takes is a statement posted online by the U.S. government. In Chokepoints, Edward Fishman, a former top State Department sanctions official, takes us deep into the back rooms of power to reveal the untold history of the last two decades of U.S. foreign policy, in which America renounced the gospel of globalization and waged a new kind of economic war.

Foreign Gods, Inc. tells the story of Ike, a New York-based Nigerian cab driver who sets out to steal the statue of an ancient war deity from his home village and sell it to a New York gallery. Ike's plan is fueled by desperation. Despite a degree in economics from a major American college, his strong accent has barred him from the corporate world. Forced to eke out a living as a cab driver, he is unable to manage the emotional and material needs of a temperamental African American bride and a widowed mother demanding financial support. When he turns to gambling, his mounting losses compound his woes.

Sixteen historians, all members of the Society of Independent Southern Historians, have come together to write this truthful history of America specifically for home-schooled students. Herein is a history that is truthful, concise, yet comprehensive, written especially for students of middle school and high school age and for the parents who provide guidance through the home school educational approach. The 40 student lessons in this book present 278 years of our history.

No major arena of US governance is more elitist than foreign policy. International relations barely surface in election campaigns, and policymakers take little input from Congress. For much of the twentieth century, officials, activists, and academics worked to foster an informed public that would embrace participation in foreign policy as a civic duty. Every Citizen a Statesman recounts an abandoned effort to create a democratic foreign policy.

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the United States Army became the principal agent of American foreign policy. The army designed, implemented, and administered the occupations of the defeated Axis powers Germany and Japan, as well as many other nations. Generals such as Lucius Clay in Germany, Douglas MacArthur in Japan, Mark Clark in Austria, and John Hodge in Korea presided over these territories as proconsuls.

 The Marquis de Lafayette: The Life and Legacy of the American Revolution’s Most Famous Foreign Soldier profiles one of the Revolutionary War’s most important figures. You will learn about Lafayette like never before. 

For the first time, Euna Lee - the young wife, mother, and film editor detained in North Korea - tells a harrowing, but ultimately inspiring, story of survival and faith in one of the most isolated parts of the world. On March 17, 2009, Lee and her Current TV colleague Laura Ling were working on a documentary about the desperate lives of North Koreans fleeing their homeland for a chance at freedom when they were violently apprehended by North Korean soldiers.

Want a quick and dirty guide on how to set yourself above the thousands of other students worldwide that are competing with you for scholarship money? Josh Barsch has been a scholarship judge since 2003, and he's identified 10 big essay-writing errors that students make every year that rob them of a chance at big-time college money. For the price of a McDonald's value meal, you can get a giant leg up on the fierce worldwide competition for scholarship money.

This landmark, myth-shattering work chronicles the most powerful institution in America, the people who created it, and the pathologies it has spawned. Carroll proves a controversial thesis: the Pentagon has, since its founding, operated beyond the control of any force in government or society. It is the biggest, loosest cannon in American history, and no institution has changed this country more.

Linda Chavez, who was denied a plum job in President George W. Bush's Cabinet because she employed an illegal alien, here has her chance to get back at the unions and like-minded organizations that opposed her candidacy. She takes this opportunity with a vengeance. Chavez is shocked that labor unions have traditionally supported Democratic politicians and social causes; to her, these politicians and causes represent "socialism" at its worst.