IN 1991 THE UNITED STATES trounced the Iraqi army in battle only to stumble blindly into postwar turmoil. Then in 2003 the United States did it again. How could this happen? How could the strongest power in modern history fight two wars against the same opponent in just over a decade, win lightning victories both times, and yet still be woefully unprepared for the aftermath?Because Americans always forget the political aspects of war. Time and again, argues Gideon ...

In the aftermath of the terrorist attack on September 11, one question has been on everyone's mind: "How did this happen?" This book seeks to answer this question in all its critical aspects--the motives and actions of the terrorists, the status of the U.S. military, the context of the Middle East, bioterrorism, airport security, diplomatic pressures--and to provide readers with perspective, information, and sound interpretation. The editors of Foreign Affairs have brought together noted e...

**The New York Times bestselling companion to the Showtime documentary series now streaming on Netflix, updated to cover the past five years.“Indispensable…There is much here to reflect upon.” —President Mikhail Gorbachev“As riveting, eye-opening, and thought-provoking as any history book you will ever read...Can’t recommend it highly enough.” —Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian“Finally, a book with the guts to challenge the accepted narrative of recent...

In this compelling and informative exploration of American foreign policy, Stephen E. Ambrose and Douglas G. Brinkley delve into the evolution of the United States' global engagement.Since it first appeared in 1971, Rise to Globalism has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. The ninth edition of this classic survey, now updated through the administration of George W. Bush, offers a concise and informative overview of the evolution of American foreign polic...

On the evening of September 11, 2002, with the Statue of Liberty shimmering in the background, television cameras captured President George W. Bush as he advocated the charge for war against Iraq. This carefully staged performance, writes Susan Brewer, was the culmination of a long tradition of sophisticated wartime propaganda in America. In Why America Fights, Brewer offers a fascinating history of how successive presidents have conducted what Donald Rumsfeld calls "perception ma...

Finalist for the 2010 National Book Award in Nonfiction: The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian returns with a groundbreaking comparative study of the dynamics and pathologies of war in modern times.Over recent decades, John W. Dower, one of America’s preeminent historians, has addressed the roots and consequences of war from multiple perspectives. In War Without Mercy (1986), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, he described and analyzed the br...

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, genocide, that has caused more deaths in the modern world than military conflict. In doing so, it challenges fundamental things we thought we knew about human beings, soc...

From a writer with long and high-level experience in the U.S. government, a startling and provocative assessment of America’s global dominance. Maximalist puts the history of our foreign policy in an unexpected new light, while drawing fresh, compelling lessons for the present and future.When the United States has succeeded in the world, Stephen Sestanovich argues, it has done so not by staying the course but by having to change it—usually amid deep controversy and uncerta...

American incomprehension of the outside world has been the chief problem in international affairs since the end of World War II. In America and the Imperialism of Ignorance, veteran political journalist Andrew Alexander constructs a meticulous case, including evidence gleaned from the steady opening up of Soviet archives, demonstrating why this is so. From starting the Cold War to revisiting unlearned lessons upon Cuba and Vietnam, the Middle East has latterly become the arena in which the...

This stellar collection of Paul Craig Roberts essays dating from February 2014 explores the extreme dangers in Washington's imposition of vassalage on other countries and Washington’s resurrection of distrust among nuclear powers, the very distrust that Reagan and Gorbachev worked to eliminate. Roberts explains how the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 removed the only check on Washington's ability to act unilaterally. The United States’ position as the sole remaining superpower led t...

A “big, serious, and thoroughly intelligent” (New York Review of Books) history of the Cold WarWe think of the Cold War as a clash of two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. But in The Cold War, award-winning historian Odd Arne Westad argues that the war must be understood as a global confrontation, with roots in the Industrial Revolution and ongoing repercussions around the world. The Cold War may have begun on the perimeters of ...

A masterful account of how sixty years of American militarism created the Cold War, fanned decades of unnecessary conflict, helped to fuel Islamist terror, and threatens to bankrupt the country.For most of the twentieth century, the sword has led before the olive branch in American foreign policy. In eye-opening fashion, State vs. Defense shows how America truly operates as a superpower and explores the constant tension between the diplomats at State and the warriors at De...