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The Human Factor
- Gorbachev, Reagan, and Thatcher, and the End of the Cold War
- Narrated by: James Langton
- Length: 21 hrs and 5 mins
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The Human Factor
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Thoroughly Researched and Evidence-Based, but...
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Publisher's summary
In this penetrating analysis of the role of political leadership in the Cold War's ending, Archie Brown shows why the popular view that Western economic and military strength left the Soviet Union with no alternative but to admit defeat is wrong.
To understand the significance of the parts played by Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher in East-West relations in the second half of the 1980s, Brown addresses several specific questions: What were the values and assumptions of these leaders, and how did their perceptions evolve? What were the major influences on them? To what extent were they reflecting the views of their own political establishment or challenging them? How important for ending the East-West standoff were their interrelations? Would any of the realistically alternative leaders of their countries at that time have pursued approximately the same policies?
The Cold War got colder in the early 1980s, and the relationship between the two military superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union, each of whom had the capacity to annihilate the other, was tense. By the end of the decade, East-West relations had been utterly transformed, with most of the dividing lines - including the division of Europe - removed. Engagement between Gorbachev and Reagan was a crucial part of that process of change. More surprising was Thatcher's role. Regarded by Reagan as his ideological and political soul mate, she formed also a strong and supportive relationship with Gorbachev (beginning three months before he came to power). Promoting Gorbachev in Washington as "[A] man to do business with", she became, in the words of her foreign policy adviser Sir Percy Cradock, "[A]n agent of influence in both directions".
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 191
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Story4 out of 5 stars 190
Western interpretations of the Cold War--both realist and neoconservative--have erred by exaggerating either the Kremlin's pragmatism or its aggressiveness, argues Vladislav Zubok. Explaining the interests, aspirations, illusions, fears, and misperceptions of the Kremlin leaders and Soviet elites, Zubok offers a Soviet perspective on the greatest standoff of the 20th century.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Focus on the Top Leadership
- By Augustus T. White on 08-13-10
By: Vladimir Zubok
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Kissinger: Volume I
- 1923-1968: The Idealist
- By: Niall Ferguson
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 34 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 256
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 227
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 226
No American statesman has been as revered and as reviled as Henry Kissinger. Once hailed as "Super-K" - the "indispensable man" whose advice has been sought by every president from Kennedy to Obama - he has also been hounded by conspiracy theorists, scouring his every "telcon" for evidence of Machiavellian malfeasance. Yet as Niall Ferguson shows in this magisterial biography, the idea of Kissinger as the ruthless arch-realist is based on a profound misunderstanding.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Riveting
- By Jean on 11-10-15
By: Niall Ferguson
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Diplomacy
- By: Henry Kissinger
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 37 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 287
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 243
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Story5 out of 5 stars 240
Moving from a sweeping overview of history to blow-by-blow accounts of his negotiations with world leaders, Henry Kissinger describes how the art of diplomacy has created the world in which we live, and how America's approach to foreign affairs has always differed vastly from that of other nations. Brilliant, controversial, and profoundly incisive, Diplomacy stands as the culmination of a lifetime of diplomatic service and scholarship. It is a must-listen for anyone concerned with the forces that have shaped our world today and will impact upon it tomorrow.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great foreign policy overview!
- By Mikhail on 02-02-20
By: Henry Kissinger
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The Nazi Menace
- Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Road to War
- By: Benjamin Carter Hett
- Narrated by: Raphael Corkhill
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 24
Berlin, November 1937. Adolf Hitler meets with his military commanders to impress upon them the urgent necessity for a war of aggression in Eastern Europe. Some generals are unnerved by the Führer’s grandiose plan, but these dissenters are silenced one by one, setting in motion events that will culminate in the most calamitous war in history.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Bad Melodramatic Reading
- By Tess on 08-18-20
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Tomorrow, the World
- The Birth of US Global Supremacy
- By: Stephen Wertheim
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 109
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 85
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 83
For most of its history, the US avoided making political and military commitments that would entangle it in European-style power politics. Then, suddenly, it conceived a new role for itself as the world’s armed superpower and never looked back. In Tomorrow, the World, Wertheim traces America’s transformation to the crucible of World War II, especially in the months prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. As the Nazis conquered France, the architects of the nation’s new foreign policy came to believe that the US ought to achieve primacy in international affairs forevermore.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Powerful punch to American dogma.
- By JLK on 06-30-21
By: Stephen Wertheim
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Hitler
- A Global Biography
- By: Brendan Simms
- Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
- Length: 29 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 76
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 66
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 66
Hitler offers a deeply learned and radically revisionist biography, arguing that the dictator's main strategic enemy, from the start of his political career in the 1920s, was not communism or the Soviet Union, but capitalism and the United States. Whereas most historians have argued that Hitler underestimated the American threat, Simms shows that Hitler embarked on a preemptive war with the United States precisely because he considered it such a potent adversary.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A good biography with a different viewpoint
- By Timothy on 10-10-19
By: Brendan Simms
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The Hundred Years' War on Palestine
- A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917--2017
- By: Rashid Khalidi
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi, Rashid Khalidi - introduction
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 902
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 815
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Story5 out of 5 stars 811
Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members - mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists - The Hundred Years' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Thoroughly Researched and Evidence-Based, but...
- By K on 05-24-21
By: Rashid Khalidi
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Putin's World
- Russia Against the West and with the Rest
- By: Angela Stent
- Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell
- Length: 15 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 175
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 159
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 158
Putin's World examines the country's turbulent past, how it has influenced Putin, the Russians' understanding of their position on the global stage and their future ambitions—and their conviction that the West has tried to deny them a seat at the table of great powers since the USSR collapsed.
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2 out of 5 stars
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More like The West against the world
- By Felis N on 01-18-20
By: Angela Stent
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Appeasement
- Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill, and the Road to War
- By: Tim Bouverie
- Narrated by: John Sessions
- Length: 22 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 129
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 108
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Story5 out of 5 stars 108
On a wet afternoon in September 1938, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain stepped off an airplane and announced that his visit to Hitler had averted the greatest crisis in recent memory. It was, he later assured the crowd in Downing Street, "peace for our time." Less than a year later, Germany invaded Poland and the Second World War began. Appeasement is a groundbreaking history of the disastrous years of indecision, failed diplomacy, and parliamentary infighting that enabled Hitler's domination of Europe.
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3 out of 5 stars
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I cannot tolerate the narrator
- By DrBCFR on 06-05-19
By: Tim Bouverie
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Europe's Last Summer
- By: David Fromkin
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 386
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 341
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 338
The early summer of 1914 was the most glorious Europeans could remember. But, behind the scenes, the most destructive war the world had yet known was moving inexorably into being, a war that would continue to resonate into the 21st century. The question of how the Great War of 1914 began has long vexed historians. In a gripping narrative, Fromkin shows that hostilities were started deliberately and that two wars were waged, one serving as pretext for the other.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A different take on the events leading to the Great War
- By Chris on 09-04-20
By: David Fromkin
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How Ike Led
- The Principles Behind Eisenhower's Biggest Decisions
- By: Susan Eisenhower
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne, Susan Eisenhower
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 195
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 166
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 164
Few people have made decisions as momentous as Eisenhower, nor has one person had to make such a varied range of them. From D-Day to Little Rock, from the Korean War to Cold War crises, from the Red Scare to the Missile Gap controversies, he was able to give our country eight years of peace and prosperity by relying on a core set of principles. These were informed by his heritage and upbringing, his strong character and his personal discipline, but he also avoided making himself the center of things. He tried to be the calmest man in the room, not the loudest.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A President of the UNITED States
- By Happy Doc on 09-10-20
By: Susan Eisenhower
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The Sleepwalkers
- How Europe Went to War in 1914
- By: Christopher Clark
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 24 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 850
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 740
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 742
The Sleepwalkers is historian Christopher Clark's riveting account of the explosive beginnings of World War I. Drawing on new scholarship, Clark offers a fresh look at World War I, focusing not on the battles and atrocities of the war itself but on the complex events and relationships that led a group of well-meaning leaders into brutal conflict.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Very interesting take on a complex problem
- By Steve on 01-24-15
-
The Biggest Prison on Earth
- A History of the Occupied Territories
- By: Ilan Pappe
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 83
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 76
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 76
Published on the 15th anniversary of the Six-Day War that culminated in the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Pappe offers a comprehensive exploration of one of the world's most prolonged and tragic conflicts. Using recently declassified archival material, Pappe analyses the motivations and strategies of the generals and politicians-and the decision-making process itself - that laid the foundation of the occupation. Pappe paints a picture of what is to all intents and purposes the world's largest "open prison".
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5 out of 5 stars
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crucial read on Palestine
- By Xjarn on 11-15-23
By: Ilan Pappe
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On China
- By: Henry Kissinger
- Narrated by: Nicholas Hormann
- Length: 20 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,374
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,139
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,132
In this sweeping and insightful history, Henry Kissinger turns for the first time at book length to a country he has known intimately for decades and whose modern relations with the West he helped shape. On China illuminates the inner workings of Chinese diplomacy during such pivotal events as the initial encounters between China and tight line modern European powers, the formation and breakdown of the Sino-Soviet alliance, the Korean War, and Richard Nixon’s historic trip to Beijing.
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3 out of 5 stars
-
Another History of China
- By Elton on 09-23-11
By: Henry Kissinger
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What listeners say about The Human Factor
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Edward C.
- 07-13-20
Compelling story of important events
Worthwhile reading and listening but about 20% too long and repetitive. The author’s regard for the role of Gorbachev skirts a cult of personality (to use a phrase relevant to Russian history) by undervaluing the roles of Helmut Kohl and Ronald Reagan as well as John Paul II. Although this Polish pope protected pedophiles at all levels of the Church throughout his papacy, his visit to Poland set loose social forces that put implacable pressure on the Soviet Union. The role of Lech Walesa is undervalued for the same reason. Great men — and women — matter but mass movements and the power of ideas can swamp systems and regimes no matter who their leaders are. The book would have been stronger by taking account of these forces and their origins.
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