International Politics

Putin's World examines the country's turbulent past, how it has influenced Putin, the Russians' understanding of their position on the global stage and their future ambitions—and their conviction that the West has tried to deny them a seat at the table of great powers since the USSR collapsed.

Tasked with rescuing the daughter of one of America's richest families from the grips of a sinister cult, Nick Stone expects his latest mission to be quick and straightforward. Travelling to the frozen depths of the Norway/Russia border, the dividing line between NATO and the Kremlin's armed forces, it seems all he and his team need do is abduct the woman and deliver her home alive. But there are deadly complications—not least that Nick soon discovers himself at the heart of a chilling cyber conspiracy that threatens war with Russia and the very existence of the Western alliance.

More than 20 years have elapsed since the United States last brokered a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. In that time, three presidents have tried and failed. Martin Indyk - a former United States ambassador to Israel and special envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in 2013 - has experienced these political frustrations and disappointments firsthand.

God and Ronald Reagan made presidential historian Paul Kengor's name as one of the premier chroniclers of the life and career of the 40th president. With The Crusader, Kengor returns with the one book about Reagan that has not been written: the story of his lifelong crusade against communism and of his dogged and ultimately triumphant effort to overthrow the Soviet Union.

David Kilcullen is one of the world's most influential experts on counterinsurgency and modern warfare. A senior counterinsurgency advisor to General David Petraeus in Iraq, his vision of war dramatically influenced America's decision to rethink its military strategy in Iraq and implement "the surge."Now, in The Accidental Guerrilla, Kilcullen provides a remarkably fresh perspective on the War on Terror.

Fresh from Afghanistan, James Bond has been recruited to a new agency. Conceived in the post-9/11 world, it operates independent of Five, Six and the MoD, its very existence deniable. Its aim: to protect the Realm, by any means necessary. The Night Action alert calls Bond from dinner with a beautiful woman. GCHQ has decrypted an electronic whisper about an attack scheduled for later in the week: casualties estimated in the thousands, British interests adversely affected.

After a harrowing escape from Russian agents on his last mission, Charles Jenkins thinks he’s finally done with the spy game. But then the final two of the seven sisters—American assets who have been deep undercover in Russia for decades—cut off all communication with their handlers. Are they in hiding after detecting surveillance? Or have they turned and become double agents? It’s Jenkins’s duty to find out, but he’s been added to a Russian kill list. It will require all of Jenkins’s knowledge of spycraft—and an array of disguises—to return to the country undetected.

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's books are events. They stir passionate public debate among political and civic leaders, scholars, and the general public because they compel people to rethink the most powerful conventional wisdoms and stubborn moral problems of the day. Worse Than War gets to the heart of the phenomenon of genocide, which has caused more deaths in the modern world than military conflict. In doing so, it challenges our fundamental beliefs about human beings, society, and politics.

Mike Lofgren is back with a book perfectly pitched for the frenzied circus of the primaries. His argument this time is that for all of the backstabbing and money grubbing of the campaign season, the politicians we elect have as little ability to shift policy as Communist party apparatchiks. Welcome to Mike Lofgren's Washington, DC - a This Town where the political theater that is endlessly tweeted and blogged about has nothing to do with actual decision making.

Russia's 2022 attack on Ukraine saw confrontation between Moscow and the West spill over into open conflict once again. But Russia has also been waging a clandestine war against the West for decades. Hostile acts abroad, from poisoning dissidents to shooting down airliners, interfering in elections, spying, hacking, and murdering, have long seemed to be the Kremlin's daily business. But what is it all for? Why does Russia consistently behave like this? Keir Giles explains how and why Russia pushes for more power and influence wherever it can reach, far beyond Ukraine.

Just a few years ago, people spoke of the US as a hyperpower—a titan stalking the world stage with more relative power than any empire in history. Yet as early as 1993, CIA director James Woolsey pointed out that although Western powers had "slain a large dragon" by defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War, they now faced a "variety of poisonous snakes." In The Dragons and the Snakes, the eminent soldier-scholar David Kilcullen asks how, and what, opponents of the West have learned during the last quarter-century of conflict.

At a time when Israel is under persistent attack - on the battlefield, by international organizations, and in the court of public opinion - Alan Dershowitz presents a powerful case for Israel’s just war against terrorism. In the spirit of his international best-seller, The Case for Israel, Dershowitz shows why Israel's struggle against Hamas is a fight not only to protect its own citizens, but for all democracies. The nation-state of the Jewish people is providing a model for all who are threatened by terrorist groups.

Recent years have brought deeply disturbing developments around the globe. American sentiment seems to be leaning increasingly toward withdrawal in the face of such disarray. In this powerful, urgent essay, Robert Kagan elucidates the reasons why American withdrawal would be the worst possible response, based as it is on a fundamental and dangerous misreading of the world. Like a jungle that keeps growing back after being cut down, the world has always been full of dangerous actors who, left unchecked, possess the desire and ability to make things worse.

No one, from economists to bankers to politicians, has been able to quantify exactly how much of the world's assets are currently hidden - until now. Gabriel Zucman is the first economist to offer reliable insight into the actual extent of the world's money held in tax havens. And it's staggering. In The Hidden Wealth of Nations, Zucman offers an inventive and sophisticated approach to quantifying how big the problem is, how tax havens work and are organized, and how we can begin to approach a solution.

While in Chechnya, CIA Special Agent Dylan Kane stumbles upon a meeting between a known Chechen drug lord and a retired general once responsible for the entire Soviet nuclear arsenal. Money is exchanged for a data stick, and the resulting transmission begins a race across the globe to discover just what was sold, the only clue a reference to a top secret Soviet weapon called Crimson Rush.

Le Secret des Présidents suit la quête de l’ex-journaliste James Bradford et de Brooke Harris, arrière-petite-fille de Miller Harris, un conseiller politique de l’ombre de John F. Kennedy. Ils sont à la recherche d’un Codex secret qui s’avère intimement lié à leur histoire familiale et à celle des Présidents des États-Unis.

Assassin's Run revives globe-trotting, hard-hitting assassin David Slaton for another breathless adventure. When a Russian oligarch is killed by a single bullet on his yacht off the Isle of Capri, Russian intelligence sources speculate that a legendary Israeli assassin, long thought dead, might be responsible. However, David Slaton - the assassin in question - is innocent. Realizing the only way to clear his name is to find out who’s truly responsible, he travels to Capri.

London, 1992. Late one night, Edward Crane, 76, is declared dead at a London hospital. An obituary describes him only as a 'resourceful career diplomat'. But Crane was much more than that—and the circumstances surrounding his death are far from what they seem. Fifteen years later, academic Sam Gaddis needs money. When a journalist friend asks for his help researching a possible sixth member of the notorious Trinity spy ring, Gaddis knows that she's onto a story that could turn his fortunes around. But within hours the journalist is dead, apparently from a heart attack.

Spying is the family business. Amanda Cole is a brilliant young CIA officer following in the footsteps of her father, who was a spy during the Cold War. It takes grit to succeed in this male-dominated world—but one hot summer day, when a Russian defector walks into her post, Amanda is given the ultimate chance to prove herself. The defector warns of the imminent assassination of a US senator. Though Amanda takes the warning seriously, her superiors don’t. Twenty-four hours later, the senator is dead. And the assassination is just beginning.

In the closing days of the 30-year Sri Lankan civil war, tens of thousands of civilians were killed, according to UN estimates, as government forces hemmed in the last remaining Tamil Tiger rebels on a tiny sand spit, dubbed "The Cage". Gordon Weiss, a journalist and UN spokesperson in Sri Lanka during the final years of the war, pulls back the curtain of government misinformation to tell the full story for the first time. Tracing the role of foreign influence as it converged with a history of radical Buddhism and ethnic conflict, The Cage is a harrowing portrait of an island paradise torn apart by war.