The Second World War created and the Cold War sustained a special relationship” between America and Britain, and the terms on which that decades-long conflict ended would become the foundation of a new world order. In this penetrating analysis, a new history of recent global politics, author James Cronin explores the dramatic reconfiguring of western foreign policy that was necessitated by the interlinked crises of the 1970s and the resulting global shift toward open markets, a movement t...

Every wizard's story has a beginning…Let’s go back to the night I turned thirteen, the night Grandpa sliced my finger with his cane sword.I can’t say what terrified me more, the cold anger in his eyes or the crazy things in his locked study. A talking trunk. Squirming coats. A bookshelf whose titles shifted before my eyes. And one chilling title in particular: Book of Souls.Ten years later and I’m en route to a Romanian monastery in search ...

How did Everson Croft end up with a talking cat?For that story, we have to go back to my early years as a wizard.With New York City in the dumps, the red light is back on in Times Square.Vampires, dark fae, and exotic entertainers have set up shop, promising pleasures beyond the wildest imagination. But now male clients are turning up stiff — all over.I'm thinking supernatural predator, even as the clues keep drawing me back to Tabitha: a my...

The New York Times bestseller“A clear and concise account of the history, diplomacy, economics, and societal forces that have molded the modern global system.” —Foreign AffairsAn invaluable primer from Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, that will help anyone, expert and non-expert alike, navigate a time in which many of our biggest challenges come from the world beyond our borders.

What would the world look like if America were to reduce its role as a global leader in order to focus all its energies on solving its problems at home? And is America really in decline? Robert Kagan, New York Times best-selling author and one of the country’s most influential strategic thinkers, paints a vivid, alarming picture of what the world might look like if the United States were truly to let its influence wane.Although Kagan asserts that much of the current pessim...

A concise yet penetrating analysis of how modern American presidents have--and have not--incorporated ethics into their foreign policy. Americans constantly make moral judgments about presidents and foreign policy. Unfortunately, many of these assessments are poorly thought through. In Do Morals Matter?, Joseph S. Nye, Jr. provides a concise yet penetrating analysis of the role of ethics in US foreign policy since Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency onward. Nye...

The second half of the twentieth century was dominated by the unfolding drama of the Cold War, from the Berlin blockade to the fall of the Berlin Wall. A booming global economy has had its sinister shadow in the apparently insoluble crises that havebeset much of the Third World. Above all, peace in the West has been offset by wars of unbelievable murderousness elsewhere. Reynolds' account is both an overview of the trends underlying this spectacular and awful variety, and an insight into t...

The United Nations has been called everything from "the best hope of mankind" to "irrelevant" and "obsolete." With this much-needed introduction to the UN, Jussi Hanhimaki engages the current debate over the organizations effectiveness as he provides a clear understanding of how it was originally conceived, how it has come to its present form, and how it must confront new challenges in a rapidly changing world. After a brief history of the United Nations and its predecessor, the League of ...

From Robert Kagan, a leading scholar of American foreign policy, comes an insightful analysis of the state of European and American foreign relations. At a time when relations between the United States and Europe are at their lowest ebb since World War II, this brief but cogent book is essential reading. Kagan forces both sides to see themselves through the eyes of the other. Europe, he argues, has moved beyond power into a self-contained world of laws, rules, and negotiation, while Americ...

What is the point of elections? The result is always the same: a victory for the Extreme Centre. Since 1989, politics has become a contest to see who can best serve the needs of the market, a competition now fringed by unstable populist movements. The same catastrophe has taken place in the US, Britain, Continental Europe and Australia.In this urgent and wide-ranging case for the prosecution, Tariq Ali looks at the people and the events that have informed this moment of political s...

The extraordinary story of the UN - its creation, the threats it has faced, and the possibilities it holds for the future.Can the world be governed by agreement rather than conflict? In 1945 the world's most powerful nation states came together to 'save succeeding generations from the scourge of war and reaffirm faith in the fundamental human rights'. Over sixty years later, the United Nations still doggedly pursues that mandate.Paul Kennedy's The Parli...

Refugees and other forced migrants are one of the great contemporary challenges the world is confronting. Throughout the world people leave their home countries to escape war, natural disasters, and cultural and political oppression. Unfortunately, even today, the international community struggles to provide an adequate response to this vast population in need. This Very Short Introduction covers a broad range of issues around the causes and impact of the contemporary refugee cris...