International Political History

An exciting, hugely revealing account of China’s burgeoning presence in Africa - a developing empire already shaping, and reshaping, the future of millions of people. A prizewinning foreign correspondent and former New York Times bureau chief in Shanghai and in West and Central Africa, Howard French is uniquely positioned to tell the story of China in Africa. Through meticulous on-the-ground reporting, French crafts a layered investigation of astonishing depth and breadth.

In April 1917, as Tsar Nicholas II's abdication sent shockwaves across war-torn Europe, the future leader of the Bolshevik revolution, Vladimir Lenin, was far away, exiled in Zurich. To lead the revolt, Lenin needed to return to Petrograd immediately. But to get there, he would have to cross Germany, which meant accepting help from the deadliest of Russia's adversaries and betraying his homeland.

For proslavery leaders like John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis, the 19th-century world was torn between two hostile forces: a rising movement against bondage and an Atlantic plantation system that was larger and more productive than ever before. In this great struggle, Southern statesmen saw the United States as slavery's most powerful champion. Overcoming traditional qualms about a strong central government, slaveholding leaders harnessed the power of the state to defend slavery abroad.

In addition to Hamas, which provoked the recent war, and Gaza with its rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, Alan Dershowitz argues that Israel's most dangerous enemies include Jimmy Carter and other western leaders who would delegitimize Israel as an apartheid regime subject to the same fate as white South Africans; Israel's academic enemies, led by professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, who would accuse supporters of Israel of dual loyalty and indeed disloyalty to America.

In Three Days in Moscow, Baier explores the dramatic endgame of America’s long struggle with the Soviet Union and President Ronald Reagan’s central role in shaping the world we live in today. On May 31, 1988, Reagan stood on Russian soil and addressed a packed audience at Moscow State University, delivering a remarkable - yet now largely forgotten - speech that capped his first visit to the Soviet capital.

In 1950, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested for allegedly passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union, an affair FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover labeled the "crime of the century". Their case became an international sensation, inspiring petitions, letters of support, newspaper editorials, and protests in countries around the world. Nevertheless, the Rosenbergs were executed after years of appeals, making them the only civilians ever put to death for conspiracy-related activities. Yet even after their executions, protests continued.

How should the United States act in the world? Americans cannot decide. Sometimes we burn with righteous anger, launching foreign wars and deposing governments. Then we retreat - until the cycle begins again. No matter how often we debate this question, none of what we say is original. Every argument is a pale shadow of the first and greatest debate, which erupted more than a century ago. Its themes resurface every time Americans argue whether to intervene in a foreign country.

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Revenge of Geography comes a sweeping yet intimate story of the most influential humanitarian you’ve never heard of - Bob Gersony, who spent four decades in crisis zones around the world.

Politics is one of the first books ever to investigate the concept of political philosophy. Written by the famous Greek thinker Aristotle in the fourth century BCE, it focuses on trying to understand how best to create political communities that support, serve, and improve their citizens. Aristotle investigates a number of different areas before drawing conclusions. These include an examination of existing regimes to see which are best, a look at political theories, and even an exploration of the systems of education.

In April 2016, computer technicians at the Democratic National Committee discovered that someone had accessed the organization's computer servers and conducted a theft that is best described as Watergate 2.0. In the weeks that followed, the nation's top computer security experts discovered that the cyber thieves had helped themselves to everything: sensitive documents, emails, donor information, even voice mails.

In each of his books, James Bradley has exposed the hidden truths behind America's engagement in Asia. Now comes his most engrossing work yet. Beginning in the 1850s, Bradley introduces us to the prominent Americans who made their fortunes in the China opium trade. As they - good Christians all - profitably addicted millions, American missionaries arrived, promising salvation for those who adopted Western ways.

Munoz provides new insight into Benazir Bhutto’s unprecedented rise and an unflinching, minute-by-minute narrative of the assassination itself. With impeccable research, Munoz also situates Bhutto in the decades-long history of U.S.-Pakistan relations and the emergence of global terrorism, pinpointing her death as the moment when those relations changed forever. The result is a gripping narrative of Pakistan’s turbulent political realities and the death of its leading politician.

The United States of America has been the most powerful country in the world for more than 70 years, but recently the US National Security Strategy declared that the return of great power competition with Russia and China is the greatest threat to US national security. Further, many analysts predict that America's autocratic rivals will have at least some success in disrupting - and, in the longer term, possibly even displacing - US global leadership. Brilliant and engagingly written, The Return of Great Power Rivalry argues that this conventional wisdom is wrong.

Amid the fear following 9/11 and other recent terror attacks, it is easy to forget the most important fact about terrorist campaigns: the always come to an end - and often far more quickly than expected. Contrary to what many assume, when it comes to dealing with terrorism it may be more important to understand how it ends than how it begins.

When Lions Roar begins in the mid-1930s at Chartwell, Winston Churchill's country estate, with new revelations surrounding a secret business deal orchestrated by Joseph P. Kennedy, the father of future American president John F. Kennedy. From London to America, these two powerful families shared an ever-widening circle of friends, lovers, and political associates - soon shattered by World War II, spying, sexual infidelity, and the tragic deaths of JFK's sister Kathleen and his older brother Joe Jr.

Examining 1,200 years of history from the foundation of Charlemagne's Holy Roman Empire to the beheading of King Charles I in England is in itself a mammoth undertaking. But it is the issues explored by German American historian Ernst H. Kantorowicz in his 1957 study The King's Two Bodies that have had a profound effect on the way academics think about the study of history.

In the early 1990s, North America was the vibrant center of an increasingly democratic and revitalized western hemisphere. The United States and Canada were close allies working together to implement a bilateral free trade agreement and build an integrated manufacturing and export economy. By the late 2000s, the economic and diplomatic ties between the two countries were strained as policies stagnated or slipped backward and passports were needed to cross the border for the first time in history.

When the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Washington establishment felt it had prevailed in a world-historical struggle. Our side had won, a verdict that was both decisive and irreversible. For the world’s “indispensable nation”, its “sole superpower”, the future looked very bright. History, having brought the United States to the very summit of power and prestige, had validated American-style liberal democratic capitalism as universally applicable.

The relationship between military leaders and political leaders has always been a complicated one, especially in times of war. When the chips are down, who should run the show, the politicians or the generals? In Supreme Command, Eliot Cohen examines four great democratic war statesmen - Abraham Lincoln, Georges Clemenceau, Winston Churchill, and David Ben-Gurion - to reveal the surprising answer - the politicians. The generals may think they know how to win, but the statesmen are the ones who see the big picture.

In The Crash of Flight 3804, Investigative Journalist Charlotte Dennett digs into her father’s counterintelligence work, which pitted him against America’s wartime allies - the British, the French, and the Russians - in a covert battle for geopolitical and economic influence in the Middle East. Through vivid storytelling, extensive research, and deep analysis of region-defining maps, she reveals how feverish competition among intelligence networks, military, and Big Oil interests have fueled indiscriminate attacks and targeted killings that continue to this day.