College student seeks book recommendations (Saturday night vanity request)

My daughter's suggestion ^ | 9/17/15 | A devoted mom

[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!

[hinckley buzzard]

Politics Among Nations. Hans J. Morgenthau.

[tuliptree76]

Ping. Can you help here?

[buccaneer81]

Anything by PJ O'Rourke.

[saveliberty]

:-) I love PJ O'Rourke. He just wrote a great article for the Atlantic Monthly in last month's edition about stag hunting in the UK as there's a big effort to regulate it out of existence and there were no parts unsuitable for young eyes (LOL! He's on target, a brilliant author, deliriously funny and very scary).

LOL LOL LOL

[Lejes Rimul]

Thanks for the heads-up. I read his American Empire : The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy this last February, and he occasionally writes for Foreign Affairs as well.

[jocon307]

"Reagan's War."

She's a big Reagan fan, so she might like that, thanks!

[Army Air Corps]

Here is a very short list:

In the Jaws of History - Bui Diem
A Preponderance of Power - Melvyn Leffler
The Gaither Committee, Eisenhower, and the Cold War - David Snead
The Reagan Reversal - Beth A. Fischer (short, but interesting)
America's Secret War against Bolshevism - David Folgelsong
One Hell of a Gamble - Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali
The Inviting Call of Wandering Souls - Lu Van Thanh
The Battle of New Orleans - Robert V. Remini

[Citizen Tom Paine]

Here is my recommendations
1. This is not in front of me, but get A Diplomatic History of the United States by Samuel Flagg Bemis (Sp?) the 5th edition
2. A Study of History by Arnold J. Toynbee There is an excellent one vol edition.
3. The Art of War by Sun TZU get the translation by Samuel B. Griffith.ISBN 0-19-501476-6
4. Koran Atrocity! The forgotten war crimes 1950-1953 by Phillip D. Chinnery ISBN 1-55750-473-3
5. A History of the United States (to 1876) by T. Harry Willliams et al LC number 59-5580
6. Oh, God, Where are You? by Abie Abraham This is about the battle of Bataan, the Fall of the Philippines, the prison camps, and disinterring the US bodies to send back to the US for a proper burial.
7. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by W. L. Shirer
8. The First Hundred Years of Nino Cochise. This is the story of Cochise as told by Nino Cochise with A Kinney Griffith.

When your daughter finishes these, I will be glad to suggest more.

Have fun.

[Knitting A Conundrum]

I used Rise to Globalism by Stephen Ambrose in three different classes when I was in college...very handy in Dr. Ambrose's own class about the years from 1945-1980ish...(he didn't require it, but the outline of the course could have come out of that book.)

[middie]

''The United States of Europe," by T.R. Reid, The Penguin Press, 2004. It is a scholarly and easlily readable examination of the evolutionary relationship between the U.S. as the post-WW II dominant economic force of the West, the success of NATO enabling the growth of a panEuropean economy and the future of the traditional U.S. European relationships in the 21st Century economic world.

[Billthedrill]

The First Salute by Barbara Tuchman

Memoirs by George F. Kennan

Charles Francis Adams - an Autobiography

Fear God And Take Your Own Part by Theodore Roosevelt

Anti-Americanism by Jean-Francois Revel

Seize The Moment: America's Challenge In A One-Superpower World by Richard Nixon

Those are recent reads of mine on the topic of the United States and international diplomacy, specifically how it has been molded from our early days to our current unusual situation. Kennan was the author of the "Long Telegram" which detailed the Containment doctrine. Adams was the son of John Quincy Adams whose public life ran from Napoleon in Russia (his father was the U.S. ambassador at the time) to answering a letter from Marx to Lincoln. The book by Roosevelt is out of print but details his post-presidential views on pre-WWI events, when the U.S. was taking its baby steps into the world of the Great Powers. It's kind of amusing to read him cursing Wilson, of all people, for isolationism. The Nixon book is a stunner, written shortly before his death - people forget the man's international vision.

So many books, so little time. Paul Johnson's History Of The American People is brilliant. It's only partly about foreign relations but worth the effort. I'd demur on Paul Kennedy - his doctrine of Imperial Overstretch proclaimed our impotence in the face of the Soviet Union shortly before we won the Cold War. Caveat emptor.

[Trinity5]

Bookmark for later library list.

[MHT]

Every summer, I try to read a Kennedy book and I think that the very best book written about John Kennedy was A Question of Character by Thomas Reeves. It received little acclaim but was a very honest portrayal of not only his strengths but his clay feet and how he was protected by Kennedy-centric ideologues at every turn. Most importantly, it's great universal tale of the development of his character until the day he died. He wasn't perfect but, like everyone else, he was in the process of becoming a better person and stronger, more insightful leader.

I also like The Haj by Leon Uris. Although fiction, it has given me a new perspective and appreciation of the problems of both Palestinians and Israeli's in the Mideast drama.

[Lancey Howard]

I STRONGLY recommend:

The Fate Of Africa:
From the Hopes of Freedom to The Heart of Despair; A History of fifty Years of Independence (Hardcover)
by Martin Meredith
(July 2005)

This author was recently interviewed by Dennis Prager. Top notch.

[Bug]

The Twenty Year's Crisis 1919-1939 by Edward Hallett Carr. It is THE seminal work on International Relations according to my brother who teaches IR at the Air Force Academy.

[JasonC]

Essential history for IR

Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger
The World in Depression by Charles Kindleberger
Modern Times by Paul Johnson

US IR Experience

Special Providence by Walter Russel Mead
Surprise, Security, and the American Experience by John Lewis Gaddis

Great figures of US IR history and policy

Turmoil and Tradition by Elting Morrison (Henry Stimson biography)
George C. Marshall by Forrest Pogue
American Caesar by William Manchester (MacArthur biography)
American Diplomacy 1900-1950 by George Kennan

Military history valuable for contemporary US and IR understanding

Command Decisions by Kent Roberts Greenfield (ed) et al (WW II strategy)
A Savage War of Peace by Alistair Horne (French in Algeria, terrorist war)

Theory and contemporary perspectives

Natural Right and History by Leo Strauss
Warrior Politics by Robert Kaplan
Civilization and its Enemies by Lee Harris
The Roads to Modernity by Gertude Himmelfarb
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics by John Mearsheimer

Classics of political theory

Thucycides, Peloponnesian War
Plato, Republic, Statesman, and Laws
Livy, History of Rome
Appian, the Civil Wars
Tacitus, Histories
Machiavelli, Prince, Discourses
Hobbes, Leviathan
Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws
Hamilton Madison & Jay, The Federalist Papers
Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

[Young Werther]

The first book on my Int'l Relations booklist was:

Grotius, On the Law of War and Peace

The book can be read at the above mentioned link! I remembered how interesting it was to find out the derivation of the "Three Mile Limit" among other "laws". It's the basis for understanding today's international scene.

[Intolerant in NJ]

Vietnam: The Necessary War by Michael Lind (the title alone should pi$$ off her professor - but the book really does present an in depth and balanced history of the war, including what led up to it).....

[ntnychik]

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, by Walter Isaacson

John Adams, by David McCullough

The Art of Political War, by David Horowitz

Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left, by David Horowitz

The Quest for Cosmic Justice, by Thomas Sowell

[Liberty Valance]

"How the Irish Saved Civilization" ~ Thomas Cahill
http://www.centuryone.com/1849-3.html