NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • “A rich and revealing account of the turbulent relationship between the U.S. and Russia during the first post-Cold War years. . . . Essential for any understanding of this critical and even dangerous period.”—Elizabeth Drew“A fascinating memoir of a weirdly unpredictable world.”—The New York Review of BooksIn the eight years Bill Clinton was president, as Russia lurched...

The presidency of Donald Trump has wreaked havoc on American democracy, divided American society, unsettled foreign allies and partners, and heartened dictators around the world. The damage at home and abroad is likely to cast a long shadow into the future. Trump has also defiled the past, most notably America's origin and its soul.The Founders counted on their successors to protect and perfect their prodigy with its fundamental ideals, laws, and procedures. They also aspired to a c...

The past five years have been turbulent for the eurozone. Yet leaders such as Angela Merkel and François Hollande are determined to keep The European Project intact, and even among one-time critics there is a broad consensus that the eurozone will have to hang together. Strobe Talbott introduces the extraordinary life and vision of Jean Monnet-the man credited as the architect of European unity. Monnet died in 1979, long before the euro went into circulation, and his relevance today is all...

The landmark story of Bush-Gorbachev diplomacy: "No one has ever given as complete and compelling an account of the higher reaches of foreign policy" ( Time).December 1989. The Berlin Wall had fallen. Millions across the Eastern Bloc were enjoying new freedoms. And the USSR was falling apart. But the peaceful end of the Cold War was far from assured, requiring the leaders of rival superpowers to look beyond the animosities of the past and embrace an uncerta...

Riveting accounts of the Cold War power struggles from the New York Times–bestselling author and "nation's leading presidential historian" ( Newsweek).The Crisis Years: A national bestseller on the complex relationship between President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, this "definitive" history covers the tumultuous period from 1960 through 1963 when the Berlin Wall was built, and the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuba...

Momentous events have a way of connecting individuals both to history and to one another. So it was on September 11. Even before more than 4000 people died in less than two hours, there were farewell messages from the sky. In their last minutes, doomed passengers used cell phones to reach loved ones. A short time later, office workers trapped high in the burning towers called spouses, children, parents. Never had so many had the means to say good-bye. During the hours afterward, the surviv...

The brief war between Russia and Georgia in August 2008 seemed to many like an unexpected shot out of the blue that was gone as quickly as it came. Former Assistant Deputy Secretary of State Ronald Asmus contends that it was a conflict that was prepared and planned for some time by Moscow, part of a broader strategy to send a message to the United States: that Russia is going to flex its muscle in the twenty-first century. A Little War that Changed the World is a fascinating look ...

Fast Forward is equal parts science primer, history lesson, policy prescription, and ethical treatise. This pithy and compelling book makes clear what we know and don't know about global warming; why the threat demands prudent and urgent action; why the transition to a low-carbon economy will be the most difficult political and economic transaction in history; and how it requires nothing less than a revolution in our sense of civic responsibility.William Antholis and Strobe...

After the Cold War, the United States and its NATO allies faced crucial questions. Could Russia, their old adversary, be integrated into the liberal international order? What roles should former Soviet republics and satellite states in Eastern and Central Europe play in the Euro-Atlantic security system? These questions have taken on renewed significance since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as Vladimir Putin has portrayed Russia as the victim of Western expansionism.This ...

With a revised foreword by Brookings President Strobe Talbott and a new introduction by Berlin’s editor, Henry Hardy.George Kennan, the architect of US policy toward the Soviet Union, called Isaiah Berlin the patron saint among the commentators of the Russian scene.” In The Soviet Mind, Berlin proves himself fully worthy of that accolade. Although the essays in this book were originally written to explore the tensions between Soviet communism and Russian culture, the thin...

How the United States helped restore a Europe battered by World War II and created the foundation for the postwar international orderSeventy years ago, in the wake of World War II, the United States did something almost unprecedented in world history: It launched and paid for an economic aid plan to restore a continent reeling from war. The European Recovery Plan-better known as the Marshall Plan, after chief advocate Secretary of State George C. Marshall-was in par...

This memoir of an American woman's life in Moscow traces the social and cultural evolution of Russia from the era of Krushchev to the era of Putin.In the mid-1960s, Naomi Collins was a graduate student at Moscow State University. As the 21st century began, she was the wife of the American Ambassador to Russia. In this insightful memoir, she shares her reflections and impressions of life as an American woman living in the Russian capital over the course of four decad...