Synopses & Reviews
The story of global cooperation between nations and peoples is a tale of dreamers goading us to find common cause in remedying humanity’s worst problems. But international institutions have also provided a tool for the powers that be to advance their own interests and stamp their imprint on the world. Mark Mazower’s
Governing the World tells the epic story of that inevitable and irresolvable tension—the unstable and often surprising alchemy between ideas and power.
From the beginning, the willingness of national leaders to cooperate has been spurred by crisis: the book opens in 1815, amid the rubble of the Napoleonic Empire, as the Concert of Europe was assembled with an avowed mission to prevent any single power from dominating the continent and to stamp out revolutionary agitation before it could lead to war. But if the Concert was a response to Napoleon, internationalism was a response to the Concert, and as courts and monarchs disintegrated they were replaced by revolutionaries and bureaucrats.
19th century internationalists included bomb-throwing anarchists and the secret policemen who fought them, Marxist revolutionaries and respectable free marketeers. But they all embraced nationalism, the age’s most powerful transformative political creed, and assumed that nationalism and internationalism would go hand in hand. The wars of the twentieth century saw the birth of institutions that enshrined many of those ideals in durable structures of authority, most notably the League of Nations in World War I and the United Nations after World War II.
Throughout this history, we see that international institutions are only as strong as the great powers of the moment allow them to be. The League was intended to prop up the British empire. With Washington taking over world leadership from Whitehall, the United Nations became a useful extension of American power. But as Mazower shows us, from the late 1960s on, America lost control over the dialogue and the rise of the independent Third World saw a marked shift away from the United Nations and toward more pliable tools such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. From the 1990s to 2007, Governing the World centers on a new regime of global coordination built upon economic rule-making by central bankers and finance ministers, a regime in which the interests of citizens and workers are trumped by the iron logic of markets.
Now, the era of Western dominance of international life is fast coming to an end and a new multi-centered global balance of forces is emerging. We are living in a time of extreme confusion about the purpose and durability of our international institutions. History is not prophecy, but Mark Mazower shows us why the current dialectic between ideals and power politics in the international arena is just another stage in an epic two-hundred-year story.
Review
"The Quest superbly captures the great questions of energy and security that face our nation in this risky world. Daniel Yergin identifies the key issues, demonstrates their urgency, and lays out the choices. He does so with such deep expertise and with such vivid narrative writing as to make this book both important and compelling. It can help us see our way to a safer and sounder energy future."
Review
"This fascinating saga is the definitive book on the most important of global issues, the quest for sustainable sources of energy. Dan Yergin, the prominent energy expert of our times, weaves together security and environmental concerns to explain the system we have toady and to analyze the sensible paths forward. This is one book you must read to understand the future of our economy and our way of life."
Review
"Dan Yergins The Prize was a magisterial masterpiece. Now Yergin widens his lens and takes in not just oil but all energy sources. Anyone who wants to understand the economics or politics of the twenty-first century should read this book."
Review
"The Quest by Daniel Yergin, one of the world's most experienced and influential authorities on global energy, may well become the definitive work on the science, history, and economics of this most complex and important subject. This masterful and illuminating book on one of the most vital issues of our time, one that will powerfully influence international politics, economics, and nations worldwide, should be essential reading for policymakers everywhere."
Review
"In the magisterial style of his earlier global narrative of energy politics, The Prize, Daniel Yergin has again delivered a sweeping, authoritative account of the science, economics, and geopolitics of energy. His writing, as ever, is clear and intelligent, and his subject could hardly be timelier."
Review
"Written by Americas preeminent energy expert, The Quest is a must read for anyone wanting to understand our energy world, how climate change became part of the energy equation-and how we can chart a path forward."
Review
"This is a profound, unique, and brilliantly written book about some of the most important issues of our times."
Review
"The search for sufficient, clean energy represents the defining challenge of this generation. Daniel Yergin has masterfully connected the forces of economics and geopolitics with the complex science of energy production and climate change. The Quest provides a lucid guide through the forest of issues that stands between us and a sustainable energy future."
Review
“Cybercrime, espionage, and warfare are among the great challenges of this century, but as Joel Brenner argues, we are woefully ill-prepared to meet them. Drawing on history, law, economics, common sense, and his rare experience in counterintelligence, Brenner deftly describes the problems and offers a series of very practical solutions. This book is both well written and convincing.”
Review
“If you have a responsibility for protecting intellectual property, trade secrets and other instruments of successful business; if you are responsible for protecting national information and technology interests then you have a responsibility to read this book. Bring a change of underwear.”
Review
“America the Vulnerable offers an expert’s keen insight into the netherworld of cyberrisk. Rich in facts, stories, and analysis, the book is a clarion call for more effective cyberpolicies and practices in both the government and private sector. America should take heed.”
Review
“Brenner takes us inside the daily battle in the world of cyber espionage, where China and others are stealing American corporations' 'secret sauce.' He shows us the on-going cyber war that the US is losing.”
Review
“Joel Brenner is a quiet hero—a lawyer who, after 9/11, forsook a prosperous life to serve the United States on a different kind of front line: the world of intelligence. He has written a book about cyberspace, that will inform his fellow citizens—and should trouble them deeply. Any reader, casually familiar with the hacking and computer mischief that one reads about daily, will nonetheless be appalled at what he learns here about the scope of cyberespionage, crime, and malicious action that has already been directed against private citizens, corporations, and the government. A lucid, scary, and very important book.”
Review
"Joel Brenners book should be front and center in the 2012 presidenti
Review
"Succinct, elegant, and challenging..." —
The Economist
"A useful primer on the habits of mind that drive our most implacable foes.... Accurate and fair-minded." —The New York Times
Review
“Mr. Yergin is back with a sequel to The Prize. It is called The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, and, if anything, it’s an even better book. It is searching, impartial and alarmingly up to date… The Quest will be necessary reading for C.E.O.’s, conservationists, lawmakers, generals, spies, tech geeks, thriller writers, ambitious terrorists and many others… The Quest is encyclopedic in its ambitions; it resists easy synopsis.”
Review
“[A] sprawling story richly textured with original material, quirky details and amusing anecdotes... The tale is generously sprinkled with facts debunking common misperceptions, and Mr. Yergin sagely analyzes how well the energy industry really works.”
Review
“[An] important book… a valuable primer on the basic issues that define energy today. Yergin is careful in his analysis and never polemical… Despite that, The Quest makes it clear that energy policy is not on the right course anywhere in the world and that everyone—on the left and the right, in the developed and the developing world—need to rethink strongly held positions.”
Review
“Mr Yergin’s previous book,
The Prize, a history of the global oil industry, had the advantage of an epic tale and wondrous timing…
The Quest, as its more open-ended title suggests, is a broader and more ambitious endeavour…
The Quest is a masterly piece of work and, as a comprehensive guide to the world’s great energy needs and dilemmas, it will be hard to beat.”
Review
“It is a cause for celebration that Yergin has returned with his perspective on a very different landscape… [I]t is impossible to think of a better introduction to the essentials of energy in the 21st century. In Yergin’s lucid, easy prose, the 800 pages flow freely… The Quest is… the definitive guide to how we got here.”
Review
“The Quest is a book—a tour de force, really—that evaluates the alternatives to oil so broadly and deeply that the physical tome could double as a doorstop… It is best read slowly, perhaps one chapter per day maximum, if the goal is to actually absorb the rich detail and sometimes complicated workings described by Yergin.”
Review
“The book then takes us on an exploration of the energy industry and its history, touching down in so many remote corners of the globe, filled with such a huge cast of sinister business magnates, visionary scientists, political scoundrels and con men that it sometimes reads like a novel.”
Review
andquot;[A] savvy study of leadership. Combining lucid historical analysis, acid-etched portraits of generals from 'troublesome blowhard' Douglas MacArthur to 'two-time loser' Tommy Franks, and shrewd postmortems of military failures and pointless slaughters such as My Lai, the author demonstrates how everything from strategic doctrine to personnel policies create a mediocre, rigid, morally derelict army leadership... Ricks presents an incisive, hard-hitting corrective to unthinking veneration of American military prowess.andquot;
andmdash; Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review)
Review
and#8220;
This is a brilliant bookand#8212;deeply researched, very well-written and outspoken. Ricks pulls no punches in naming names as he cites serious failures of leadership, even as we were winning World War II, and failures that led to serious problems in later wars.and#160; And he calls for rethinking the concept of generalship in the Army of the future.and#8221;
and#8212;William J. Perry, 19th U.S. Secretary of Defense
and#8220;Thomas E. Ricks has written a definitive and comprehensive story of American generalship from the battlefields of World War II to the recent war in Iraq. The Generals candidly reveals their triumphs and failures, and offers a prognosis of what can be done to ensure success by our future leaders in the volatile world of the twenty-first century.and#8221;
and#8212;Carlo Dand#8217;Este, author of Patton: A Genius for War
and#8220;Tom Ricks has written another provocative and superbly researched book that addresses a critical issue, generalship. After each period of conflict in our history, the quality and performance of our senior military leaders comes under serious scrutiny. The Generals will be a definitive and controversial work that will spark the debate, once again, regarding how we make and choose our top military leaders.and#8221;
and#8212;Anthony C. Zinni, General USMC (Ret.)
and#8220;The Generals is insightful, well written and thought-provoking. Using General George C. Marshall as the gold standard, it is replete with examples of good and bad generalship in the postwar years. Too often a bureaucratic culture in those years failed to connect performance with consequences. This gave rise to many mediocre and poor senior leaders. Seldom have any of them ever been held accountable for their failures. This book justifiably calls for a return to the strict, demanding and successful Marshall prescription for generalship. It is a reminder that the lives of soldiers are more important than the careers of officersand#8212;and that winning wars is more important than either.and#8221;
and#8212;Bernard E. Trainor, Lt. Gen. USMC (Ret.); author of The Generalsand#8217; War
and#8220;The Generals rips up the definition of professionalism in which the US Army has clothed itself. Tom Ricks shows that it has lost the habit of sacking those who cannot meet the challenge of war, leaving it to Presidents to do so. His devastating analysis explains much that is wrong in US civil-military relations. Americaand#8217;s allies, who have looked to emulate too slavishly the worldand#8217;s pre-eminent military power, should also take heed.and#8221;
and#8212;Hew Strachan, Chichele Professor of the History of War, University of Oxford and#160;
Review
“[Ferguson] uses his powerful narrative talents in these pages to give the reader a highly tactile sense of history. … The author [has a] knack for making long-ago events as vivid and visceral as the evening news, for weaving anecdotes and small telling details together with a wide-angled retrospective vision” –
New York Times “A dazzling history of Western ideas” –The Economist
“Mr. Ferguson tells his story with characteristic verve and an eye for the felicitous phrase.” – Wall Street Journal
“[W]ritten with vitality and verve… a tour de force.” –Boston Globe
“This is sharp. It feels urgent. Ferguson, with a properly financially literate mind, twists his knife with great literary brio…Ferguson ends by suggesting the biggest threat is not China but ourselves – our cowardice, drawn from ignorance, even stupidity, about our past. He is right. But as he shows himself, that can be fixed.” –The Financial Times
Review
A Washington Post 2012 Notable Work of Nonfiction
"Ricks shines, blending an impressive level of research with expert storytelling."
and#8212;The Weekly Standard
"[A] savvy study of leadership. Combining lucid historical analysis, acid-etched portraits of generals from 'troublesome blowhard' Douglas MacArthur to 'two-time loser' Tommy Franks, and shrewd postmortems of military failures and pointless slaughters such as My Lai, the author demonstrates how everything from strategic doctrine to personnel policies create a mediocre, rigid, morally derelict army leadership... Ricks presents an incisive, hard-hitting corrective to unthinking veneration of American military prowess."
and#8212;Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review)
"Informed readers, especially military buffs, will appreciate this provocative, blistering critique of a system where accountability appears to have gone missing - like the author's 2006 bestseller, Fiasco, this book is bound to cause heartburn in the Pentagon."
and#8212;Kirkus
"Entertaining, provocative and important."
and#8212;The Wilson Quarterly
Review
andquot;[
A] savvy study of leadership. Combining lucid historical analysis, acid-etched portraits of generals from 'troublesome blowhard' Douglas MacArthur to 'two-time loser' Tommy Franks, and shrewd postmortems of military failures and pointless slaughters such as My Lai, the author demonstrates how everything from strategic doctrine to personnel policies create a mediocre, rigid, morally derelict army leadership...
Ricks presents an incisive, hard-hitting corrective to unthinking veneration of American military prowess.andquot;
andmdash;Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review)
andquot;Informed readers, especially military buffs, will appreciate this provocative, blistering critique of a system where accountability appears to have gone missing - like the author's 2006 bestseller, Fiasco, this book is bound to cause heartburn in the Pentagon.andquot;
andmdash;Kirkus
Review
andquot;Achebe writes in a characteristically modest fashion. It is without restraint but not without tact that his body of work has protested mediocrity in its various forms, from the British colonial apparatus, to the worldandrsquo;s ignorance of African literatures, to the corrosive mismanagement that has plagued Nigeria.
Like much of Achebeandrsquo;s other work, this book about the progress of war and the presence of violence has a universal quality. In a world where sectarian hatreds augmented by political mediocrity have fractured Syria and threaten to bring Israel and Iran to blows,
There Was a Country is a valuable account of how the suffering caused by war is both unnecessary and formative.andquot;
andmdash;Newsweek
andquot;Memoir and history are brought together by a master storyteller.andquot;
andmdash;The Guardian
Review
One of Financial Times' Best Books of 2012
"A significant contribution to historical scholarship, with the chapters on the 19th century's remarkable swirl of politics, ideas and organisations being particularly original and valuable... Simply for giving us this lucid account, Mazower deserves our gratitude. But Governing the World is also an intriguing read because of the strong argument he places within it... This new work certainly gave this reviewer an awful lot to think about--to an author, there may be no greater praise than that."
--Paul Kennedy, Financial Times
"Mazower has strengthened his claim to be the preeminent historian of a generation. Combining breathtaking originality with meticulous and gloriously eclectic research, he offers the most convincing explanation yet articulated for the exaggerated, even hysterical, expectations of the 1990s and the subsequent collapse of optimism after the Millennium now translated into a fear that grips large parts of the Western world. On rare occasions, a work of history emerges that not only fundamentally refashions our understanding of the past, it enables us to reassess the present and, with luck, influence our future. I advise everyone who is concerned about our precarious situation to learn from and absorb Mazower's remarkable achievement."
--Misha Glenny
"Governing Europe, and then the whole world... This idea has found its perfect chronicler in Mark Mazower, whose perceptions are cosmopolitan, humane, learned, and properly skeptical. What is more, his history is written in clear, elegant prose. Essential reading not just for historians, but anyone interested in the troubled world we live in."
--Ian Buruma
"A prodigious work: a master historian's reconstruction of how individuals and nations since 1815 have sought to promote national interests in ever more complicated international settings. A dramatic, novel account of ideas and institutions in collision with hard realities. Indispensable also for its full and subtle account of American policies since 1917, always with a fine touch for the hitherto neglected person or little noticed moment that illuminates historic processes. Profound, relevant, and morally instructive--and a pleasure to read."
--Fritz Stern
"This is a book that needed to be written ... [Governing the World] is truly illuminating ... The story is a fascinating one, and Mazower tells it with authority and verve."
--Adam Zamoyski, Literary Review
"The idea of global government has entranced the world for centuries. Mark Mazower's brilliant book shows how much effort has gone into this idea—and how futile it has mostly been in an era of individualism and growing divisiveness."
--Alan Brinkley
"After tracing the early strands of internationalism, Mazower moves into the modern's era complex convergence of political and economic factors in forging what Mikhail Gorbachev called a 'new world order.' The peacetime League of Nations, despite its failures, would 'marry the democratic idea of a society of nations with the reality of Great Power hegemony.' Finally, Mazower brings us to the present, as a European union has been achieved, but has been driven by a 'bureaucratic elite' with little sense of 'principles of social solidarity and human dignity,' except perhaps by noted philanthropists. A well-articulated, meticulously supported study."
--Kirkus
Review
A Washington Post 2012 Notable Work of Nonfiction
"[A] savvy study of leadership. Combining lucid historical analysis, acid-etched portraits of generals from 'troublesome blowhard' Douglas MacArthur to 'two-time loser' Tommy Franks, and shrewd postmortems of military failures and pointless slaughters such as My Lai, the author demonstrates how everything from strategic doctrine to personnel policies create a mediocre, rigid, morally derelict army leadership... Ricks presents an incisive, hard-hitting corrective to unthinking veneration of American military prowess."
and#8212;Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review)
"Informed readers, especially military buffs, will appreciate this provocative, blistering critique of a system where accountability appears to have gone missing - like the author's 2006 bestseller, Fiasco, this book is bound to cause heartburn in the Pentagon."
and#8212;Kirkus
"Entertaining, provocative and important."
and#8212;The Wilson Quarterly
Review
and#8220;
This is a brilliant bookand#8212;deeply researched, very well-written and outspoken. Ricks pulls no punches in naming names as he cites serious failures of leadership, even as we were winning World War II, and failures that led to serious problems in later wars.and#160; And he calls for rethinking the concept of generalship in the Army of the future.and#8221;
and#8212;William J. Perry, 19th U.S. Secretary of Defense
and#8220;Thomas E. Ricks has written a definitive and comprehensive story of American generalship from the battlefields of World War II to the recent war in Iraq. The Generals candidly reveals their triumphs and failures, and offers a prognosis of what can be done to ensure success by our future leaders in the volatile world of the twenty-first century.and#8221;
and#8212;Carlo Dand#8217;Este, author of Patton: A Genius for War
and#8220;Tom Ricks has written another provocative and superbly researched book that addresses a critical issue, generalship. After each period of conflict in our history, the quality and performance of our senior military leaders comes under serious scrutiny. The Generals will be a definitive and controversial work that will spark the debate, once again, regarding how we make and choose our top military leaders.and#8221;
and#8212;Anthony C. Zinni, General USMC (Ret.)
and#8220;The Generals is insightful, well written and thought-provoking. Using General George C. Marshall as the gold standard, it is replete with examples of good and bad generalship in the postwar years. Too often a bureaucratic culture in those years failed to connect performance with consequences. This gave rise to many mediocre and poor senior leaders. Seldom have any of them ever been held accountable for their failures. This book justifiably calls for a return to the strict, demanding and successful Marshall prescription for generalship. It is a reminder that the lives of soldiers are more important than the careers of officersand#8212;and that winning wars is more important than either.and#8221;
and#8212;Bernard E. Trainor, Lt. Gen. USMC (Ret.); author of The Generalsand#8217; War
and#8220;The Generals rips up the definition of professionalism in which the US Army has clothed itself. Tom Ricks shows that it has lost the habit of sacking those who cannot meet the challenge of war, leaving it to Presidents to do so. His devastating analysis explains much that is wrong in US civil-military relations. Americaand#8217;s allies, who have looked to emulate too slavishly the worldand#8217;s pre-eminent military power, should also take heed.and#8221;
and#8212;Hew Strachan, Chichele Professor of the History of War, University of Oxford and#160;
Review
A Financial Times Best Politics Book of 2012
“A splendid account…highly compelling.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Impressive…a significant contribution to historical scholarship… Simply for giving us this lucid account, Mazower deserves our gratitude. But Governing the World is also an intriguing read because of the strong argument he places within it: that it may be that this grand idea, with all its variants, is coming to an end.”—Paul Kennedy, Financial Times
“Fascinating…A well-articulated, meticulously supported study.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Mark Mazower has strengthened his claim to be the preeminent historian of a generation…On rare occasions, a work of history emerges that not only fundamentally refashions our understanding of the past, it enables us to reassess the present and, with luck, influence our future. I advise everyone who is concerned about our precarious situation to learn from and absorb Mazowers remarkable achievement.”—Misha Glenny
“A dramatic, novel account of ideas and institutions in collision with hard realities. Indispensable also for its full and subtle account of American policies since 1917, always with a fine touch for the hitherto neglected person or little noticed moment that illuminates historic processes. Profound, relevant, and morally instructive—and a pleasure to read.”—Fritz Stern
Review
“A compelling, readable narrative…[
America the Vulnerable] should be required reading on Capitol Hill and in the West Wing."
Review
“A public service announcement of the most urgent sort, this engrossing book reveals how our lack of cyber savvy, both as individuals and as a nation, is exposing us to extraordinary risks…thought-provoking reading from an expert witness.”
Review
“If you have a responsibility for protecting intellectual property, trade secrets and other instruments of successful business; if you are responsible for protecting national information and technology interests then you have a responsibility to read this book. Bring a change of underwear.”
Review
“Cybercrime, espionage, and warfare are among the great challenges of this century, but as Joel Brenner argues, we are woefully ill-prepared to meet them. Drawing on history, law, economics, common sense, and his rare experience in counterintelligence, Brenner deftly describes the problems and offers a series of very practical solutions. This book is both well written and convincing.”
Review
“America the Vulnerable offers an expert’s keen insight into the netherworld of cyberrisk. Rich in facts, stories, and analysis, the book is a clarion call for more effective cyberpolicies and practices in both the government and private sector. America should take heed.”
Review
“Brenner takes us inside the daily battle in the world of cyber espionage, where China and others are stealing American corporations' 'secret sauce.' He shows us the on-going cyber war that the US is losing.”
Review
“Joel Brenner is a quiet hero—a lawyer who, after 9/11, forsook a prosperous life to serve the United States on a different kind of front line: the world of intelligence. He has written a book about cyberspace, that will inform his fellow citizens—and should trouble them deeply. Any reader, casually familiar with the hacking and computer mischief that one reads about daily, will nonetheless be appalled at what he learns here about the scope of cyberespionage, crime, and malicious action that has already been directed against private citizens, corporations, and the government. A lucid, scary, and very important book.”
Review
“For decades, Ninkovich has pioneered profound and sweeping works on the history of American foreign relations, most notably on the complex interaction of culture, writ large, on diplomacy. This book is no exception. Ninkovich explores how America rose to power, buffeted by the winds of globalization that shaped its culture, society, and ideology. His conceptualization moves beyond new and old approaches by placing the United States not just in the world, but in a global society. The scholarship is sound, the grasp on theory is breathtaking, and the method of weaving together external and internal transformative forces is original. This tour de force situates the author among the intellectual leaders of international relations history.”
Review
“‘Marvelous is the word to characterize this book. It is a marvel of insight, reflection, and analysis. Displaying the erudition, depth, and wit that readers have long since come to expect from him, Ninkovich has produced a strikingly original account of the United Statess two centuries of experience in the world. He combines ascents to heights of philosophical discourse with consistent exercise in down-to-earth skepticism toward ideologies and intellectual constructs, including his own emphasis on globalism. No one who cares about America and the world can afford not to read this book.”
Review
“Frank Ninkovich has done it again. The Global Republic offers a wide-ranging and original account of Americas place in the modern world. A pioneer in bringing culture to the study of American foreign relations, Ninkovich deftly weaves together culture, politics, and economics in this impressive and counterintuitive analysis of what did—and didn't—make the United States an exceptional world power.”
Review
“We often now speak of ‘America in the World and Ninkovich has firmly put the world in the nations history. His provocative book challenges us to move beyond the categories of American exceptionalism that historians have too often leaned upon to see globalization, and the ability of the United States to ride and guide its waves, as a decisive force in the nations status in the world.”
Review
“Frank Ninkovich delivers a bold and compelling argument in this brilliant book. Challenging a generation of scholarship on the history of U.S. foreign relations, he rejects American exceptionalism by stressing the power of globalization itself. The result is an innovative work that moves from American attempts to join international society at the turn of the century, through efforts to rescue it amid global war and Cold War conflict, into the unsettling dilemmas of our own era. For all seeking a fresh interpretation of America’s engagement with the world, The Global Republic provides a striking new approach.”
Review
"Frank Ninkovichs The Global Republic . . . illuminates recent events and forecasts trajectories without pandering or prejudice. It eschews cheap shots for subtle insights. It is passionate and dispassionate. It is great history."
Review
“[Ninkovich] asserts that Americas climb as a world power was not driven from its conception by an abiding missionary quest. Rather, the author says it was an inadvertent consequence of responding and adapting to the pressures of fast-moving globalization in the 19th and 20th centuries in an effort to keep alive the American dream and way of life. . . . Ninkovichs interpretation explaining Americas ascension to world dominance will intrigue readers of the history of American foreign policy.”
Synopsis
Selected by The New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of the Year
In this gripping account of the quest for the energy that our world needs, Daniel Yergin continues the riveting story begun in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Prize. A master storyteller as well as a leading energy expert, Yergin shows us how energy is an engine of global political and economic change. It is a story that spans the energies on which our civilization has been built and the new energies that are competing to replace them. From the jammed streets of Beijing to the shores of the Caspian Sea, from the conflicts in the Mideast to Capitol Hill and Silicon Valley, Yergin takes us into the decisions that are shaping our future.
The drama of oil-the struggle for access, the battle for control, the insecurity of supply, the consequences of use, its impact on the global economy, and the geopolitics that dominate it-continues to profoundly affect our world.. Yergin tells the inside stories of the oil market and the surge in oil prices, the race to control the resources of the former Soviet empire, and the massive mergers that transformed the landscape of world oil. He tackles the toughest questions: Will we run out of oil? Are China and the United States destined to come into conflict over oil? How will a turbulent Middle East affect the future of oil supply?
Yergin also reveals the surprising and sometimes tumultuous history of nuclear and coal, electricity, and the "shale gale" of natural gas, and how each fits into the larger marketplace. He brings climate change into unique perspective by offering an unprecedented history of how the field of climate study went from the concern of a handful of nineteenth- century scientists preoccupied with a new Ice Age into one of the most significant issues of our times.
He leads us through the rebirth of renewable energies and explores the distinctive stories of wind, solar, and biofuels. He offers a perspective on the return of the electric car, which some are betting will be necessary for a growing global economy.
The Quest presents an extraordinary range of characters and dramatic stories that illustrate the principles that will shape a robust and flexible energy security system for the decades to come. Energy is humbling in its scope, but our future requires that we deeply understand this global quest that is truly reshaping our world.
Synopsis
From one of our most renowned historians, Civilization is the definitive history of Western civilization's rise to global dominance-and the "killer applications" that made this improbable ascent possible.
The rise to global predominance of Western civilization is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five hundred years. All over the world, an astonishing proportion of people now work for Western-style companies, study at Western-style universities, vote for Western-style governments, take Western medicines, wear Western clothes, and even work Western hours. Yet six hundred years ago the petty kingdoms of Western Europe seemed unlikely to achieve much more than perpetual internecine warfare. It was Ming China or Ottoman Turkey that had the look of world civilizations. How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed?
In Civilization: The West and the Rest, bestselling author Niall Ferguson argues that, beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts that the Rest lacked: competition, science, the rule of law, consumerism, modern medicine, and the work ethic. These were the "killer applications" that allowed the West to leap ahead of the Rest, opening global trade routes, exploiting newly discovered scientific laws, evolving a system of representative government, more than doubling life expectancy, unleashing the Industrial Revolution, and embracing a dynamic work ethic. Civilization shows just how fewer than a dozen Western empires came to control more than half of humanity and four fifths of the world economy.
Yet now, Ferguson argues, the days of Western predominance are numbered-not because of clashes with rival civilizations, but simply because the Rest have now downloaded the six killer apps we once monopolized-while the West has literally lost faith in itself.
Civilization does more than tell the gripping story of the West's slow rise and sudden demise; it also explains world history with verve, clarity, and wit. Controversial but cogent and compelling, Civilization is Ferguson at his very best.
Synopsis
A former top-level National Security Agency insider goes behind the headlines to explore America's next great battleground: digital security. An urgent wake-up call that identifies our foes; unveils their methods; and charts the dire consequences for government, business, and individuals.
Shortly after 9/11, Joel Brenner entered the inner sanctum of American espionage, first as the inspector general of the National Security Agency, then as the head of counterintelligence for the director of national intelligence. He saw at close range the battleground on which our adversaries are now attacking us-cyberspace. We are at the mercy of a new generation of spies who operate remotely from China, the Middle East, Russia, even France, among many other places. These operatives have already shown their ability to penetrate our power plants, steal our latest submarine technology, rob our banks, and invade the Pentagon's secret communications systems.
Incidents like the WikiLeaks posting of secret U.S. State Department cables hint at the urgency of this problem, but they hardly reveal its extent or its danger. Our government and corporations are a "glass house," all but transparent to our adversaries. Counterfeit computer chips have found their way into our fighter aircraft; the Chinese stole a new radar system that the navy spent billions to develop; our own soldiers used intentionally corrupted thumb drives to download classified intel from laptops in Iraq. And much more.
Dispatches from the corporate world are just as dire. In 2008, hackers lifted customer files from the Royal Bank of Scotland and used them to withdraw $9 million in half an hour from ATMs in the United States, Britain, and Canada. If that was a traditional heist, it would be counted as one of the largest in history. Worldwide, corporations lose on average $5 million worth of intellectual property apiece annually, and big companies lose many times that.
The structure and culture of the Internet favor spies over governments and corporations, and hackers over privacy, and we've done little to alter that balance. Brenner draws on his extraordinary background to show how to right this imbalance and bring to cyberspace the freedom, accountability, and security we expect elsewhere in our lives.
In America the Vulnerable, Brenner offers a chilling and revelatory appraisal of the new faces of war and espionage-virtual battles with dangerous implications for government, business, and all of us.
Synopsis
Twenty-five years ago, Edward Said's Orientalism spawned a generation of scholarship on the denigrating and dangerous mirage of "the East" in the Western colonial mind. But "the West" is the more dangerous mirage of our own time, Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit argue, and the idea of "the West" in the minds of its self-proclaimed enemies remains largely unexamined and woefully misunderstood. Occidentalism is their groundbreaking investigation of the demonizing fantasies and stereotypes about the Western world that fuel such hatred in the hearts of others.
We generally understand "radical Islam" as a purely Islamic phenomenon, but Buruma and Margalit show that while the Islamic part of radical Islam certainly is, the radical part owes a primary debt of inheritance to the West. Whatever else they are, al Qaeda and its ilk are revolutionary anti-Western political movements, and Buruma and Margalit show us that the bogeyman of the West who stalks their thinking is the same one who has haunted the thoughts of many other revolutionary groups, going back to the early nineteenth century. In this genealogy of the components of the anti-Western worldview, the same oppositions appear again and again: the heroic revolutionary versus the timid, soft bourgeois; the rootless, deracinated cosmopolitan living in the Western city, cut off from the roots of a spiritually healthy society; the sterile Western mind, all reason and no soul; the machine society, controlled from the center by a cabal of insiders—often Jews—pulling the hidden levers of power versus an organically knit-together one, a society of "blood and soil." The anti-Western virus has found a ready host in the Islamic world for a number of legitimate reasons, they argue, but in no way does that make it an exclusively Islamic matter.
A work of extraordinary range and erudition, Occidentalism will permanently enlarge our collective frame of vision
Synopsis
Draw ing on an unprecedented range and variety of original research,
Hitler?s Empire sheds new light on how the Nazis designed, maintained, and lost their European dominion?and offers a chilling vision of what the world would have become had they won the war. Mark Mazower forces us to set aside timeworn opinions of the Third Reich, and instead shows how the party drew inspiration for its imperial expansion from America and Great Britain. Yet the Nazis? lack of political sophistication left them unequal to the task of ruling what their armies had conquered, despite a shocking level of cooperation from the overwhelmed countries. A work as authoritative as it is unique,
Hitler?s Empire is a surprising?and controversial? new appraisal of the Third Reich?s rise and ultimate fall.
Synopsis
A history of the project of world government, from the first post-Napoleonic visions of the brotherhood of man to the current crisis of global finance.
The Napoleonic Wars showed Europe what sort of damage warring states could do. But how could sovereign nations be made to share power and learn to look beyond their own narrow interests? The old monarchs had one idea. Mazzini and the partisans of nationalist democracy had another, and so did Marx and the radical Left.
It is an argument that has raged for two hundred years now, and Mark Mazower tells its history enthrallingly in Governing the World. With each era, the stakes have grown higher as the world has grown smaller and the potential rewards to cooperation and damage from conflict have increased.
As Mark Mazower shows us, each age’s dominant power has set the tune, and for nearly a century that tune has been sung in English. He begins with Napoleon’s defeat, in 1815, when England, Russia, Austria, and Prussia formed the Concert of Europe. Against this, there emerged many of the ideas that would shape the international institutions of the twentieth century–liberal nationalism, communism, the expertise of the scientist and the professional international lawyers. Mazower traces these ideas into the Great War through to the League of Nations. He explains how the League collapsed when confronted by the atrocities of the Third Reich, and how a more hard-nosed approach to international governance emerged in its wake.
The United Nations appeared in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, and a war-fighting alliance led by Great Britain and the United States was ultimately what transformed into an international peacetime organization. Mazower examines the ideas that shaped the UN, the compromises and constraints imposed by the Cold War and its transformation in the high noon of decolonization. The 1970s ushered in a sea change in attitudes to international government through the emergence of a vision of globalized capitalism in the 1970s that marginalized the UN itself and utilized bodies like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization—the final acts of Anglo- American institution-building.
But the sun is setting on Anglo-American dominance of the world’s great international institutions. We are at the end of an era, Mazower explains, and we are passing into a new age of global power relations, a shift whose outcome is still very much in question.
Synopsis
From the legendary author of Things Fall Apart
comes a longawaited memoir about coming of age with a fragile new nation, then watching it torn asunder in a tragic civil war The defining experience of Chinua Achebeandrsquo;s life was the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967andndash;1970. The conflict was infamous for its savage impact on the Biafran people, Chinua Achebeandrsquo;s people, many of whom were starved to death after the Nigerian government blockaded their borders. By then, Chinua Achebe was already a world-renowned novelist, with a young family to protect. He took the Biafran side in the conflict and served his government as a roving cultural ambassador, from which vantage he absorbed the warandrsquo;s full horror. Immediately after, Achebe took refuge in an academic post in the United States, and for more than forty years he has maintained a considered silence on the events of those terrible years, addressing them only obliquely through his poetry. Now, decades in the making, comes a towering reckoning with one of modern Africaandrsquo;s most fateful events, from a writer whose words and courage have left an enduring stamp on world literature.
Achebe masterfully relates his experience, bothas he lived it and how he has come to understand it. He begins his story with Nigeriaandrsquo;s birth pangs and the story of his own upbringing as a man and as a writer so that we might come to understand the countryandrsquo;s promise, which turned to horror when the hot winds of hatred began to stir. To read There Was a Country is to be powerfully reminded that artists have a particular obligation, especially during a time of war. All writers, Achebe argues, should be committed writersandmdash;they should speak for their history, their beliefs, and their people.
Marrying history and memoir, poetry and prose, There Was a Country is a distillation of vivid firsthand observation and forty years of research and reflection. Wise, humane, and authoritative, it will stand as definitive and reinforce Achebeandrsquo;s place as one of the most vital literary and moral voices of our age.
Synopsis
From the #1 bestselling author of Fiasco and The Gamble, an epic history of the decline of American military leadership from World War II to Iraq
History has been kind to the American generals of World War IIandmdash;Marshall, Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradleyandmdash;and less kind to the generals of the wars that followed. In The Generals, Thomas E. Ricks sets out to explain why that is. In part it is the story of a widening gulf between performance and accountability. During the Second World War, scores of American generals were relieved of command simply for not being good enough. Today, as one American colonel said bitterly during the Iraq War, andldquo;As matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war.andrdquo;
In The Generals we meet great leaders and suspect ones, generals who rose to the occasion and those who failed themselves and their soldiers. Marshall and Eisenhower cast long shadows over this story, as does the less familiar Marine General O. P. Smith, whose fighting retreat from the Chinese onslaught into Korea in the winter of 1950 snatched a kind of victory from the jaws of annihilation.
But Korea also showed the first signs of an army leadership culture that neither punished mediocrity nor particularly rewarded daring. In the Vietnam War, the problem grew worse until, finally, American military leadership bottomed out. The My Lai massacre, Ricks shows us, is the emblematic event of this dark chapter of our history. In the wake of Vietnam a battle for the soul of the U.S. Army was waged with impressive success. It became a transformed institution, reinvigorated from the bottom up. But if the body was highly toned, its head still suffered from familiar problems, resulting in tactically savvy but strategically obtuse leadership that would win battles but end wars badly from the first Iraq War of 1990 through to the present.
Ricks has made a close study of Americaandrsquo;s military leaders for three decades, and in his hands this story resounds with larger meaning: about the transmission of values, about strategic thinking, and about the difference between an organization that learns and one that fails.
Synopsis
Western civilization’s rise to global dominance is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five centuries. All over the world, more and more people study at Western-style universities, work for Western-style companies, vote for Western-style governments, take Western medicines, wear Western clothes, and play Western sports. Yet six hundred years ago the petty kingdoms of Western Europe seemed like miserable backwaters, ravaged by incessant war and pestilence. It was Ming China or Ottoman Turkey that had the look of world civilizations. How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed?
In Civilization: The West and the Rest, acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson argues that, beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts that the Rest lacked: competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic. These were the ‘killer applications’ that allowed the West to leap ahead of the Rest; opening global trade routes, exploiting new scientific knowledge, evolving representative government, more than doubling life expectancy, unleashing the industrial revolution, and hugely increasing human productivity. Civilization shows exactly how a dozen Western empires came to control three-fifths of mankind and four-fifths of the world economy.
Yet now, Ferguson argues, the days of Western predominance are numbered because the Rest have finally downloaded the six killer apps the West once monopolized – while the West has literally lost faith in itself.
Chronicling the rise and fall of empires alongside the clashes of civilizations, Civilization recasts world history with verve and wit. Boldly argued but also teeming with memorable characters, this is Ferguson at his very best.
Synopsis
A majestic narrative reckoning with the forces that have shaped the nature and destiny of the worlds governing institutions The story of global cooperation is a tale of dreamers goading us to find common cause in remedying humanitys worst problems. But international institutions are also tools for the powers that be to advance their own interests. Mark Mazowers Governing the World tells the epic, two-hundred-year story of that inevitable tensionthe unstable and often surprising alchemy between ideas and power. From the rubble of the Napoleonic empire in the nineteenth century through the birth of the League of Nations and the United Nations in the twentieth century to the dominance of global finance at the turn of the millennium, Mazower masterfully explores the current era of international life as Western dominance wanes and a new global balance of powers emerges.
Synopsis
A chilling and revelatory appraisal of the new faces of espionage and warfare on the digital battleground Shortly after 9/11, Joel Brenner entered the inner sanctum of American espionage, first as the inspector general of the National Security Agency, then as the head of counterintelligence for the director of National Intelligence. He saw at close range the battleground on which adversaries are attacking us: cyberspace.
Like the rest of us, governments and corporations inhabit glass houses,” all but transparent to a new generation of spies who operate remotely from such places as China, the Middle East, Russia, and even France. In this urgent wake-up call, Brenner draws on his extraordinary background to show what we canand cannotdo to prevent cyber spies and hackers from compromising our security and stealing our latest technology.
Synopsis
For decades the United States has been the most dominant player on the worlds stage. The countrys economic authority, its globally forceful foreign policy, and its leading position in international institutions tend to be seen as the result of a long-standing, deliberate drive to become a major global force. Furthermore, it has become widely accepted that American exceptionalismthe belief that America is a country like no other in historyhas been at the root of many of the countrys political, military, and global moves. Frank Ninkovich disagrees.
One of the preeminent intellectual historians of our time, Ninkovich delivers here his most ambitious and sweeping book to date. He argues that historically the United States has been driven not by a belief in its destiny or its special character but rather by a need to survive the forces of globalization. He builds the powerful case that American foreign policy has long been based on and entangled in questions of global engagement, while also showing that globalization itself has always been distinct fromand sometimes in direct conflict withwhat we call international society.
In the second half of the twentieth century, the United States unexpectedly stumbled into the role of global policeman and was forced to find ways to resolve international conflicts that did not entail nuclear warfare. The United States's decisions were based less in notions of exceptionalism and more in a need to preserve and expand a flourishing global society that had become essential to the American way of life.
Sure to be controversial, The Global Republic compellingly and provocatively counters some of the deepest and most common misconceptions about Americas history and its place in the world.
Synopsis
From one of world literatures most courageous voices, a novel about the human cost of Chinas one-child policy through the lens of one rural family on the run from its reach
Far away from the Chinese economic miracle, from the bright lights of Beijing and Shanghai, is a vast rural hinterland, where life goes on much as it has for generations, with one extraordinary difference: normal” parents are permitted by the state to have only a single child. The Dark Road is the story of one such normal” familyMeili, a young peasant woman; her husband, Kongzi, a village schoolteacher; and their daughter, Nannan.
Kongzi is, according to family myth, a direct lineal descendant of Confucius, and he is haunted by the imperative to carry on the family name by having a son. And so Meili becomes pregnant again without state permission, and when local family planning officials launch a new wave of crackdowns, the family makes the radical decision to leave its village and set out on a small, rickety houseboat down the Yangtze River. Theirs is a dark road, and tragedy awaits them, and horror, but also the fierce beauty born of courageous resistance to injustice and inhumanity.
The Dark Road is a haunting and indelible portrait of the tragedies befalling women and families at the hands of Chinas one-child policy and of the human spirits capacity to endure even the most brutal cruelty. While Ma Jian wrote The Dark Road, he traveled through the rural backwaters of southwestern China to see how the state enforced the one-child policy far from the outside worlds prying eyes. He met local women who had been seized from their homes and forced to undergo abortions or sterilization in the policys name; and on the Yangtze River, he lived among fugitive couples who had gone on the run so they could have more children, that most fundamental of human rights.
Like all of Ma Jians novels, The Dark Road is also a celebration of the life force, of the often comically stubborn resilience of mans most basic instincts.
Synopsis
Frank Ninkovichs revisionist history of Americas relation to the world debunks American exceptionalism once and for all by showing how Americas role in the world has been driven less by its ideals than by its fears. What makes the United States special in the global arena is not its economic dominance, its aggressive foreign policy, or its influence over international institutions. Rather, the United States has become distinctive through its deep-seated and long-standing engagement with the forces of globalizationas well as the threats that they represent or embody. The United States has been exceptionally aware of globalizing forces because it has come to have the most to lose on their account. This magisterial overview of the real history of Americas role in the world will demystify, clarify, and -- depending on your politics -- enrage.
Synopsis
A majestic narrative reckoning with the forces that have shaped the nature and destiny of the worlds governing institutions The story of global cooperation is a tale of dreamers goading us to find common cause in remedying humanitys worst problems. But international institutions are also tools for the powers that be to advance their own interests. Mark Mazowers Governing the World tells the epic, two-hundred-year story of that inevitable tensionthe unstable and often surprising alchemy between ideas and power. From the rubble of the Napoleonic empire in the nineteenth century through the birth of the League of Nations and the United Nations in the twentieth century to the dominance of global finance at the turn of the millennium, Mazower masterfully explores the current era of international life as Western dominance wanes and a new global balance of powers emerges.
Synopsis
A chilling and revelatory appraisal of the new faces of espionage and warfare on the digital battleground Shortly after 9/11, Joel Brenner entered the inner sanctum of American espionage, first as the inspector general of the National Security Agency, then as the head of counterintelligence for the director of National Intelligence. He saw at close range the battleground on which adversaries are attacking us: cyberspace.
Like the rest of us, governments and corporations inhabit glass houses,” all but transparent to a new generation of spies who operate remotely from such places as China, the Middle East, Russia, and even France. In this urgent wake-up call, Brenner draws on his extraordinary background to show what we canand cannotdo to prevent cyber spies and hackers from compromising our security and stealing our latest technology.
About the Author
Daniel Yergin is a highly respected authority on energy, international politics, and economics. Yergin is a Pulitzer Prize winner and recipient of the United States Energy Award for “lifelong achievements in energy and the promotion of international understanding.” He is both a world-recognized author and a business leader, as well as executive vice president of IHS.
Yergin received the Pulitzer Prize for his work The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, which became a number one best seller and was made into an eight-hour PBS/BBC series seen by 20 million people in the United States. The book has been translated into 17 languages and has just been released in a new updated edition.
Yergin holds a BA from Yale University and a PhD from Cambridge University, where he was a Marshall Scholar.
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE: Captain William DePuy and the 90th Division in Normandy, summer 1944
PART I
WORLD WAR II
1. General George C. Marshall: The leader
2. Dwight Eisenhower: How the Marshall system worked
3. George Patton: The specialist
4. Mark Clark: The man in the middle
5. andldquo;Terrible Terryandrdquo; Allen: Conflict between Marshall and his protandeacute;gandeacute;s
6. Eisenhower manages Montgomery
7. Douglas MacArthur: The general as presidential aspirant
8. William Simpson: The Marshall system and the new model American general
PART II
THE KOREAN WAR
9. William Dean and Douglas MacArthur: Two generals self- destruct
10. Army generals fail at Chosin
11. O. P. Smith succeeds at Chosin
12. Ridgway turns the war around
13. MacArthurandrsquo;s last stand
14. The organization manandrsquo;s Army
PART III
THE VIETNAM WAR
15. Maxwell Taylor: Architect of defeat
16. William Westmoreland: The organization man in command
17. William DePuy: World War IIandndash; style generalship in Vietnam
18. The collapse of generalship in the 1960s
- a. At the top
- b. In the field
- c. In personnel policy
19. Tet andrsquo;68: The end of Westmoreland and the turning point of the war
20. My Lai: General Kosterandrsquo;s cover-up and General Peersandrsquo;s investigation
21. The end of a war, the end of an Army
PART IV
INTERWAR
22. DePuyandrsquo;s great rebuilding
23. andldquo;How to teach judgmentandrdquo;
PART V
IRAQ AND THE HIDDEN COSTS OF REBUILDING
24. Colin Powell, Norman Schwarzkopf, and the empty triumph of the 1991 war
25. The ground war: Schwarzkopf vs. Frederick Franks
26. The postandndash; Gulf War military
27. Tommy R. Franks: Two- time loser
28. Ricardo Sanchez: Over his head
29. George Casey: Trying but treading water
30. David Petraeus: An outlier moves in, then leaves
EPILOGUE: Restoring American military leadership
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTES
INDEX