This book offers insightful analysis of cultural representation in Japanese cinema of the early 21st century. The impact of transnational production practices on films such as Dolls (2002), Sukiyaki Western Django (2007), Tetsuo: The Bullet Man (2009), and 13 Assassins (2010) is considered through textual and empirical analysis. The author discusses contradictory forms of cultural representation – cultural concealment and cultural performance – and their...

Since the end of the Cold War, and especially following the US decision to invade Iraq, the once strong partnership between the US, Canada, and the European allies has faced the serious possibility of significant change, or even dissolution. At the very least, fundamental differences have emerged in the ways that many of the partners, perceive the issues that are most important to them—from perceptions of the threat of terrorism and attitudes to the use of force, to expectation ab...

Alongside war, there has always been diplomacy; alongside the warlord, the diplomat seeking a nonmilitary solution. Diplomatic efforts have shortened some of our worst wars and exacerbated others. The interaction of war and diplomacy is a theme avidly studied worldwide, considered by political and military strategists, and watched over by all those interested in international affairs.War and Diplomacy uses twentieth- and twenty-first-century case studies to review the evolu...

An award-winning military historian, professor, and political adviser delivers the definitive story of warfare in all its guises and applications, showing what has driven and continues to drive this uniquely human form of political violence.Questions about the future of war are a regular feature of political debate, strategic analysis, and popular fiction. Where should we look for new dangers? What cunning plans might an aggressor have in mind? What are the best fo...

The Soldier and the Changing State is the first book to systematically explore, on a global scale, civil-military relations in democratizing and changing states. Looking at how armies supportive of democracy are built, Zoltan Barany argues that the military is the most important institution that states maintain, for without military elites who support democratic governance, democracy cannot be consolidated. Barany also demonstrates that building democratic armies is the quintessen...

Transatlantic Relations Since 1945 offers a comprehensive account of transatlantic relations in the second half of the 20th century (extending to the present-day).The transatlantic relationship has been the bedrock of international relations since the end of World War II. This new textbook will focus on the period since the defeat of Nazi Germany, when the multitude of links between United States and Western Europe were created, extended, and multiplied. Written in an acce...

Based on new and existing research by a world-class scholar, this is the first book in twenty years to examine the dynamics of the entire American-West European relationship since 1945. The relationship between the United States and Western Europe has always been crucial and recent events dictate that it is becoming ever more so. In this important new work, Geir Lundestad analyses the balance between the cooperation and conflict which has characterized this relationship in the post-war per...

US Foreign Policy since 1945 is an essential introduction to postwar US foreign policy. It combines chronologic and thematic chapters to provide an historical account of US policy and to explore key questions about its design, control and effects.New features of this second edition include:expanded coverage of the Cold Warnew chapters on the post-Cold War eraa chronology and a new conclusion that draws together key themes and looks to the ...

Few would contest that the U.S. occupation of Iraq is a clear example of just how fraught a military occupation can become. In Occupational Hazards, David M. Edelstein elucidates the occasional successes of military occupations and their more frequent failures. Edelstein has identified twenty-six cases since 1815 in which an outside power seized control of a territory where the occupying party had no long-term claim on sovereignty. In a book that has implications for prese...

In Japan, obsessive adult fans and collectors of manga and anime are known as otaku. When the underground otaku subculture first emerged in the 1970s, participants were looked down on within mainstream Japanese society as strange, antisocial loners. Today otaku have had a huge impact on popular culture not only in Japan but also throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States.Hiroki Azuma’s Otaku offers a critical, philosophical, and historical inquiry into the cha...

In the 2016 CBC Massey Lectures, former Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General and international relations specialist Jennifer Welsh delivers a timely, intelligent, and fascinating analysis of twenty-first-century geopolitics.In 1989, as the Berlin Wall crumbled and the Cold War dissipated, the American political commentator Francis Fukuyama wrote a famous essay, entitled “The End of History,” which argued that the demise of confrontation between Communism and...

Canada in the Great Power Game 1914-2014 is a serious contemplation of what it means to engage in major world conflicts, and the price we pay when we do.The First World War was Canada's baptism of fire, or at least the only one that people now remember. (Montrealers in 1776 or Torontonians in 1814 would have taken a different view.) From 1914 to 1918, after a century of peace, Canadians were plunged back into the old world of great power rivalries and grea...