International Politics

For decades, Robert R. Fowler was a dominant force in Canadian foreign affairs. In one heart-stopping minute, all of that changed. On December 14, 2008, Fowler, acting as the UN Secretary General's Special Envoy to Niger, was kidnapped by Al Qaeda, becoming the highest-ranked UN official ever held captive. Along with his colleague Louis Guay, Fowler lived, slept, and ate with his captors for nearly five months, gaining rare first-hand insight into the motivations of the world's most feared terror group.

The ascension of Vladimir Putin - a former lieutenant colonel of the KGB - to the presidency of Russia in 1999 should have been a signal that the country was headed away from democracy. Yet in the intervening years - as America and the world's other leading powers have continued to appease him - Putin has grown into not only a dictator but a global threat. With his vast resources and nuclear weapons, Putin is at the center of a worldwide assault on political liberty.

Julian Lawndsley has renounced his high-flying job in the city for a simpler life running a bookshop in a small English seaside town. But only a couple of months into his new career, Julian’s evening is disrupted by a visitor. Edward, a Polish émigré living in Silverview, the big house on the edge of town, seems to know a lot about Julian’s family and is rather too interested in the inner workings of his modest new enterprise.

In From Beirut to Jerusalem, Thomas L. Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times and a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner, has drawn on his decade in the Middle East to produce the most trenchant, vivid, and thought-provoking book yet on the region.

Japan is the forge of the world’s fantasies: karaoke and the Walkman, manga and anime, Pac-Man and Pokémon, online imageboards and emojis. But as Japan media veteran Matt Alt proves in this brilliant investigation, these novelties did more than entertain. They paved the way for our perplexing modern lives.

From Lt. General H.R. McMaster, US Army, ret., the former national security advisor and author of the best-selling classic Dereliction of Duty, comes a bold and provocative re-examination of the most critical foreign policy and national security challenges that face the United States, and an urgent call to compete to preserve America’s standing and security.

It is impossible to think of Russia today without thinking of Vladimir Putin. More than any other major national leader, he personifies his country in the eyes of the outside world, and dominates Western media coverage of it to an extraordinary extent. In Russia itself, he is likewise the centre of attention for detractors and supporters alike. But as Tony Wood argues, this overwhelming focus on the president and his personality means that we understand Russia less than we ever did before.

Resuming the narrative of his Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars, best-selling author Steve Coll tells for the first time the epic and enthralling story of America's intelligence, military, and diplomatic efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 9/11.

Complete with a road map of the trends and players shaping the world today, Never Give an Inch is more than a historical review of the Trump Administration's greatest victories. It is essential listening for anyone who wants to understand the challenges of the future. And it is an inspirational story of leadership through dangerous times that will leave you with a greater appreciation for America.

Something very strange -- and sinister -- is going on in the Russian woods at Borodino. In a place called Mrs. Ivanova's Charm School, young KGB agents are being taught by American POW's how to be model citizens of the USA. The Soviet goal -- to infiltrate the United States undetected. When an unsuspecting American tourist stumbles upon this secret, he sets in motion a CIA investigation that will reveal horrifying police state savagery and superpower treachery.

With vivid story-telling, extensive historical research, and on-the-ground reporting, Ghattas dispels accepted truths about a region she calls home. She explores how Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran, once allies and twin pillars of US strategy in the region, became mortal enemies after 1979. She shows how they used and distorted religion in a competition that went well beyond geopolitics. Feeding intolerance, suppressing cultural expression, and encouraging sectarian violence from Egypt to Pakistan, the war for cultural supremacy led to many events.

CNN’s chief national security correspondent reveals the invisible fronts of 21st-century warfare and identifies the ongoing battles being waged - often without the public’s full knowledge - from disinformation campaigns to advanced satellite weaponry.

From Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen, Somalia, and beyond, Scahill speaks to the CIA agents, mercenaries, and elite Special Operations Forces operators who populate the dark side of American war-fighting. He goes deep into al Qaeda-held territory in Yemen and walks the streets of Mogadishu with CIA-backed warlords. We also meet the survivors of US night raids and drone strikes - including families of US citizens targeted for assassination by their own government - who reveal the human consequences of the dirty wars the United States struggles to keep hidden.

International security is never out of the headlines. War and peace, military strategy, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and revisionist states remain central to the discussion, but concerns such as climate change, migration, poverty, health, and international terrorism have complicated the field. So what really matters: the traditional prioritization of state security or the security needs of individuals, humanity, and the biosphere?

In The Precipice, Noam Chomsky sheds light into the phenomenon of Trumpism, exposes the catastrophic nature and impact of Trump's policies on people, the environment, and the planet as a whole, and captures the dynamics of the brutal class warfare launched by the masters of capital to maintain and even enhance the features of a dog-eat-dog society to the unprecedented mobilization of millions of people against neoliberal capitalism, racism, and police violence.

Jamais l'Histoire n'a connu de telles accélérations comme aujourd'hui. Et malgré leurs opportunités économiques et technologiques, jamais nos sociétés n'ont été autant menacées. Pour comprendre et décrypter le monde de demain, voici le rapport captivant fourni par le renseignement américain. Comment les Etats-Unis exerceront-ils leur leadership dans les vingt prochaines années ? La Russie demeurera-t-elle agressive si son économie faiblit ? Comment l'Europe affrontera-t-elle sa crise d'identité et la montée des populismes ?

In this major statement, the renowned international-relations scholar John Mearsheimer argues that liberal hegemony, the foreign policy pursued by the United States since the Cold War ended, is doomed to fail. It makes far more sense, he maintains, for Washington to adopt a more restrained foreign policy based on a sound understanding of how nationalism and realism constrain great powers abroad.

Comprenez enfin les rouages de l'économie et de la finance et leur impact concret sur votre quotidien comme sur le destin du monde... Que se passe-t-il lorsque je contracte un emprunt ? D'où vient l'argent que me prête la banque ? Qu'appelle-t-on la dette ? Qu'est-ce qu'une obligation ? Pourquoi les États veulent-ils absolument "sauver" les banques ? Et pourquoi est-il urgent que nous, citoyens, comprenions les rouages de l'économie et de la finance ?

A kidnapped child. A nation in crisis. A woman who knows no limits...Maya Raines is a spy caught between two cultures. She's half-Malaysian and half-American. Her skills are razor-sharp, but her soul is eternally conflicted. Now she finds herself drawn into a web of intrigue when a crisis erupts in Malaysia. A female terrorist named Khadijah has kidnapped the young son of an American businessman. It's a brazen act that marks the beginning of a civil war that threatens to destabilize Southeast Asia. Who is Khadijah? What does she want? And can she be stopped?

A high-ranking scientist has been kidnapped, and a secret British intelligence agency has just recruited Deighton’s iconic unnamed protagonist—later christened Harry Palmer—to find out why. His search begins in a grimy Soho club and brings him to the other side of the world. When he ends up amongst the Soviets in Beirut, what seemed a straightforward mission turns into something far more sinister.