World History Political Science

This audiobook delves into six distinct episodes that helped to define the character of a Lincolnian foreign policy: his debate, as a young congressman, with law partner Billy Herndon over the conduct of the Mexican war; his conflict with William Seward over the control of the State Department; his standoff with Britain's Lord Palmerston during the Trent crisis of 1861; his race with Karl Marx to master the new art of molding public opinion; his deadlock with Napoleon III over the French occupation of Mexico; and John Hay's post-assassination battle to define Lincoln's legacy.

In the wake of the September 11 attacks and the US-led invasion of Iraq, Suzy Hansen, who grew up in an insular conservative town in New Jersey, was enjoying early success as a journalist for a high-profile New York newspaper. Increasingly, though, the disconnect between the chaos of world events and the response at home took on pressing urgency for her. Seeking to understand the Muslim world that had been reduced to scaremongering headlines, she moved to Istanbul.

Alan Dershowitz has spent years advocating for his "most challenging client" - the state of Israel - both publicly and in private meetings with high-level international figures, including every US president and Israeli leader of the past 40 years. Replete with personal insights and unreported details, Defending Israel offers a comprehensive history of modern Israel from the perspective of one of the country's most important supporters. Listeners are given a rare front-row seat to the high-profile controversies and debates that Dershowitz was involved in over the years.

Henry Kissinger, uno de los principales estrategas políticos del siglo xx, analiza en este nuevo libro los perfiles de seis de los líderes mundiales más fascinantes e influyentes del pasado reciente: Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Richard Nixon, Anwar Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew y Margaret Thatcher.

An innovation expert illuminates why your power to make a difference is no longer bound by your status. In The Power of Onlyness, Nilofer Merchant, one of the world's top-ranked business thinkers, reveals that we have now reached an unprecedented moment of opportunity for your ideas to "make a dent" on the world.

Eighteen years after the genocide that made Rwanda international news, yet left it all but abandoned by the West, the country has achieved a miraculous turnaround. Rising out of the complete devastation of a failed state, Rwanda has emerged on the world stage yet again - this time with a unique model for governance and economic development under the leadership of its strong and decisive president, Paul Kagame. Here, Patricia Crisafulli and Andrea Redmond look at Kagame’s leadership.

As President Barack Obama's adviser on Russian affairs, Michael McFaul helped craft the United States' policy known as "reset" that fostered new and unprecedented collaboration between the two countries. And then, as US ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, he had a front-row seat when this fleeting, hopeful moment crumbled with Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency. This riveting inside account combines history and memoir to tell the full story of US-Russia relations from the fall of the Soviet Union to the new rise of the hostile, paranoid Russian president.

19th century Europe produced some of the greatest soldiers, statesmen, scientists, artists, and thinkers of any period in recorded history. And by the middle of that century nationalism had emerged triumphant from Ireland to Greece, and many new nations, including Germany and Italy, had appeared. But nationalism was accompanied by a chauvinistic impulse toward militarism.

Without oil, there would be no globalisation, no plastic, little transport, and a global political landscape that few would recognise. It is the lifeblood of the modern world, and humanity’s dependence upon it looks set to continue for decades to come. In this captivating audiobook, Vaclav Smil explains all matters related to ‘black gold’, from its discovery in the earth, right through to the political maelstrom that surrounds it today.

In this compelling new book, relying on original reporting from the most dangerous corners of Rio to the halls of power in Washington, DC, Dave Zirin examines how sports and politics are colliding in remarkable fashion in Brazil, opening up an international conversation on the culture, economics, and politics of sports.

The problem isn’t that liberal authors present their opinions or interpretations of history from an obvious left-wing bias. Students learn, for example, that the Founding Fathers were elitists who drafted the Constitution in order to protect their own economic interests; that Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation only because he needed black soldiers; that racist groups such as the KKK represented our society in the early twentieth century.

In The Long Hangover, Shaun Walker provides new insight into contemporary Russia and its search for a new identity, telling the story through the country's troubled relationship with its Soviet past. Walker not only explains Vladimir Putin's goals and the government's official manipulations of history, but also focuses on ordinary Russians and their motivations. He charts how Putin raised victory in World War II to the status of a national founding myth in the search for a unifying force to heal a divided country, and shows how dangerous the ramifications of this have been.

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of the national best seller Ghost Wars, Steve Coll presents the story of the Bin Laden family's rise to power and privilege, revealing new information to show how American influences changed the family and how one member's rebellion changed America.

Most Americans have grown accustomed to accept the version of history that the Soviets were our noble allies and took the brunt of the casualties during World War II. But after decades of research by veteran journalist M. Stanton Evans and intelligence expert Herbert Romerstein, the truth has come to light and is now exposed in Stalin's Secret Agents. Evans and Romerstein focus on the role of secret Communist Alger Hiss at the crucial Yalta Conference of 1945, where vast U.S. concessions were made to Russia....

US relations with Iran have been fraught for decades, but, under the Trump Administration, tensions are rising to startling levels. Medea Benjamin, one of the best-known 21st century activists, offers the incredible history of how a probable alliance became a bitter antagonism in this accessible and fascinating story.

In Putinomics, Chris Miller examines the making of Russian economic policy since Vladimir Putin took power in 1999. Miller argues that Putin's economic strategy has functioned far more effectively than most Westerners realize. While acknowledging that part of Putin's successes - above all, quadrupling per capita GDP in just a decade and a half - can be attributed to cashing in on high oil prices, Miller details the government policies that have also been fundamental to Russia's growth.

Plato is perhaps the most significant philosopher who has ever lived, and The Republic, composed in Athens in about 375 BC, is widely regarded as his most famous dialogue. Its discussion of the perfect city and the perfect mind laid the foundations for Western culture and, for over 2,000 years, has been the cornerstone of Western philosophy.

While Vladimir Putin has been president and prime minister of Russia, the Kremlin has deployed the security services to intimidate the political opposition, reassert the power of the state, and carry out assassinations overseas. At the same time, its agents and spies were put beyond public accountability and blessed with the prestige, benefits, and legitimacy lost since the Soviet collapse.

What's happening in global politics? As if overnight, many Democrats revolted and passionately backed a socialist named Bernie Sanders; the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union; the vituperative billionaire Donald Trump became the presidential nominee of the Republican party; and a slew of rebellious parties continued to win elections in Switzerland, Norway, Italy, Austria, and Greece. John B. Judis, one of America's most respected political analysts, tells us why we need to learn about the populist movement.

Kissinger's six leaders are Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Richard Nixon, Anwar Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew and Margaret Thatcher. All of them were formed in a period when established institutions collapsed all over Europe, colonial structures gave way to independent states in Asia and Africa, and a new international order had to be created from the vestiges of the old.