Posted on 09/17/2005 6:30:54 PM PDT by jocon307
My daughter has asked me to ask you all to recommend books on foreign affairs for her college course on International relations. My understanding is they must be non-fiction and pertain to the US relations with other nations, but other than that the field is wide open. They can be about any time in our history, any country, wide ranging or very specific and, of course, excellent writing always preferred. Thanks in advance to all who care to respond!
This is so great, this is just the kind of dialoge I was hoping to have, thanks to you both.
FR bookclub ping.
Thans for that list. I wanted to read "Emergency Sex" myself, I knew it must be great when I say how much trouble they got into for writing it. But I figured it might make my head explode. Insofar as I'm concerned if that commie Chavez wants to relocate the UN to the abandoned Heinz factory I've got $100- to chip in to the effort.
It might be an attractive title to the college set, eh?
Here's a Gutenberg Library free download of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/148.html.utf8.gz
That's just to whet the appetite
And then Van Doren's biography of Franklin, the chapters on his time as the Colonists' representative in England and as US ambassador to France are an interesting read.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0140152601/002-5297798-4768014?v=glance
A good companion book to Rise and Fall is The New American Militarism, by Andrew Bacevich, a really good analysis of how "patriotism" is being twisted into militarism by the people who run the White House. It's written by a truly conservative, retired officer who has no ax to grind in any political sense.
This book sort of brings up to date and close to home (if you'll forgive the double cliches) Kennedy's lessons.
Thanks for the ping---this is a great topic for a thread, also.
I do appreciate other freeper's opinions about books on these subjects.
Wow, you have already received lots of great reading recommendations. I haven't read the Paul Johnson book mentioned, but I have read others and I recommend him highly.
Samuel Huntington is required reading in grad school and you can't go wrong there.
I would also recommend Our Oldest Enemy, by Stephen C. Moore. It's a fascinating history of US relations with France and dispels the myths of French friendship and alliance since the dawning of our country. It's quite a shock to read what French governments have tried to do to the US.
Yikes! Wrong author! John J Miller. My apologies
It's good to talk real history, ma'am. Reality has been getting a little thin on the ground here at FR lately.
:-) My father's favorite quote is one of President Washington's. President Washington wrote " We have not heard from our Ambassador to France, Mr. Franklin, in over a year. Perhaps someone should write him a letter."
I'm in the middle of reading and impressed so far by Robert Kagan's Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order. It's really a long essay, more than a book.
P.J. O'Rourke has written a lot of good stuff, but Holiday's in Hell, even if from the 80s is maybe his best.
I'd recommend a book by my old college professor Steve Rock, 'When Peace Breaks Out,' or something like that, written in the late 1980s. Problem was the fall of the Berlin Wall just after its publication seriously undermined his thesis.
Nice guy, but pie-in-the-sky liberal. In that respect, it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
"Our Oldest Enemy, by Stephen C. Moore."
Yes, just reading the reviews of that book shocked me. I really thought the French were our friends.
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