How much of a mom do I sound like?
Thanks guys and gals, you know it all!
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.
Politics Among Nations. Hans J. Morgenthau.
Ping. Can you help here?
Anything by PJ O'Rourke.
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
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.)
''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.
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.
Bookmark for later library list.
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.
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
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.
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
"How the Irish Saved Civilization" ~ Thomas Cahill
http://www.centuryone.com/1849-3.html
Most of the books suggested so far appear to be largely books of political philosophy or broad historical records. If you are interested in good topical books on current issues in international affairs, you need look no further than the online bookstores of some of our DC Think Tanks. The books will generally reflect the political philosophy of their sponsoring instutitions, which will be a refreshing contrast to the books that your daughter's school is likely to have assigned. Here is a typical example as well as links to three of the major think tanks. You should encourage your daughter to explore these sites. (In addition to the great book selection, your daughter will also find thousands of topical articles, research papers and lecture notes reflecting non leftist perspectives.)
https://secure.heritage.org/bookstore/ProductDetail.cfm?id=10
Rethinking One China
John J. Tkacik, Jr.
"One China" poses a dilemma for American foreign policy. China says Taiwan is part of China; Taiwan says it is not. Meanwhile, the United States refuses to support either position. This American agnosticism is confusingly called the "One China Policy." The essays in this book look at the reality: that two separate countries now face each other across the Taiwan Strait. One is the emerging Chinese superpower on the Asian mainland, and the other is the young Taiwanese democracy in the island rim of the Western Pacific.
Rethinking One China
John J. Tkacik, Jr.
"One China" poses a dilemma for American foreign policy. China says Taiwan is part of China; Taiwan says it is not. Meanwhile, the United States refuses to support either position. This American agnosticism is confusingly called the "One China Policy." The essays in this book look at the reality: that two separate countries now face each other across the Taiwan Strait. One is the emerging Chinese superpower on the Asian mainland, and the other is the young Taiwanese democracy in the island rim of the Western Pacific.
http://heritage.org (conservative)
http://aei.org (neo-con)
http://cato.org (libertarian)