America in the World
A History of U.S. Diplomacy and Foreign Policy
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $35.09
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Brian Troxell
About this listen
America has a long history of diplomacy - ranging from Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson to Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, and James Baker - now is your chance to see the impact these Americans have had on the world.
Recounting the actors and events of US foreign policy, Zoellick identifies five traditions that have emerged from America's encounters with the world: the importance of North America; the special roles trading, transnational, and technological relations play in defining ties with others; changing attitudes toward alliances and ways of ordering connections among states; the need for public support, especially through Congress; and the belief that American policy should serve a larger purpose. These traditions frame a closing review of post-Cold War presidencies, which Zoellick foresees serving as guideposts for the future.
Both a sweeping work of history and an insightful guide to US diplomacy past and present, America in the World serves as an informative companion and practical adviser to listeners seeking to understand the strategic and immediate challenges of US foreign policy during an era of transformation.
©2020 Robert B. Zoellick (P)2020 TwelveListeners also enjoyed...
-
International Relations 101: The Definitive Audio Course on America's Foreign Policy
- By: Robert K. Brigham
- Narrated by: Robert K. Brigham
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The great American experiment is one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of civilization. How did America transform from a scrappy collection of British colonies into a global superpower? Through vivid accounts and insightful analysis, Prof. Brigham shows you that America’s ascent into world leadership was neither preordained nor accidental.
-
-
Only listen if you want to learn a lot
- By Anonymous User on 12-18-19
-
The Back Channel
- A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal
- By: William J. Burns
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall, William J. Burns
- Length: 17 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over the course of more than three decades as an American diplomat, William J. Burns played a central role in the most consequential diplomatic episodes of his time - from the bloodless end of the Cold War to the collapse of post-Cold War relations with Putin’s Russia, from post-9/11 tumult in the Middle East to the secret nuclear talks with Iran. In The Back Channel, Burns recounts, with novelistic detail and incisive analysis, some of the seminal moments of his career.
-
-
A Definitive look at Diplomacy
- By Anonymous User on 07-19-19
By: William J. Burns
-
Career Diplomacy
- Life and Work in the US Foreign Service (Fourth Edition)
- By: Harry W. Kopp, John K. Naland
- Narrated by: BJ Harrison
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Career Diplomacy takes listeners inside the world of American diplomats in the US Foreign Service. Members of the Foreign Service represent the country abroad, protect and support American citizens overseas, manage government programs and facilities, and move foreign policy from the abstract to the actual.
-
-
Great book, but biased.
- By Anonymous User on 09-02-22
By: Harry W. Kopp, and others
-
Diplomacy
- By: Henry Kissinger
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 37 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Great foreign policy overview!
- By Anonymous User on 02-02-20
By: Henry Kissinger
-
Exercise of Power
- American Failures, Successes, and a New Path Forward in the Post-Cold War World
- By: Robert M. Gates
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 16 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the former secretary of defense and author of the acclaimed number one best-selling memoir, Duty, a candid, sweeping examination of power, and how it has been exercised, for good and bad, by American presidents in the post-Cold War world.
-
-
Thoughtful Evaluation by Someone in the Know
- By Anonymous User on 07-11-20
By: Robert M. Gates
-
The Hell of Good Intentions
- America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy
- By: Stephen M. Walt
- Narrated by: Stephen M. Walt
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the New York Times best-selling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy - explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it.
-
-
Shifted My Thinking
- By Anonymous User on 11-07-18
By: Stephen M. Walt
-
International Relations 101: The Definitive Audio Course on America's Foreign Policy
- By: Robert K. Brigham
- Narrated by: Robert K. Brigham
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The great American experiment is one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of civilization. How did America transform from a scrappy collection of British colonies into a global superpower? Through vivid accounts and insightful analysis, Prof. Brigham shows you that America’s ascent into world leadership was neither preordained nor accidental.
-
-
Only listen if you want to learn a lot
- By Anonymous User on 12-18-19
-
The Back Channel
- A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal
- By: William J. Burns
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall, William J. Burns
- Length: 17 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over the course of more than three decades as an American diplomat, William J. Burns played a central role in the most consequential diplomatic episodes of his time - from the bloodless end of the Cold War to the collapse of post-Cold War relations with Putin’s Russia, from post-9/11 tumult in the Middle East to the secret nuclear talks with Iran. In The Back Channel, Burns recounts, with novelistic detail and incisive analysis, some of the seminal moments of his career.
-
-
A Definitive look at Diplomacy
- By Anonymous User on 07-19-19
By: William J. Burns
-
Career Diplomacy
- Life and Work in the US Foreign Service (Fourth Edition)
- By: Harry W. Kopp, John K. Naland
- Narrated by: BJ Harrison
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Career Diplomacy takes listeners inside the world of American diplomats in the US Foreign Service. Members of the Foreign Service represent the country abroad, protect and support American citizens overseas, manage government programs and facilities, and move foreign policy from the abstract to the actual.
-
-
Great book, but biased.
- By Anonymous User on 09-02-22
By: Harry W. Kopp, and others
-
Diplomacy
- By: Henry Kissinger
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 37 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Great foreign policy overview!
- By Anonymous User on 02-02-20
By: Henry Kissinger
-
Exercise of Power
- American Failures, Successes, and a New Path Forward in the Post-Cold War World
- By: Robert M. Gates
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 16 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the former secretary of defense and author of the acclaimed number one best-selling memoir, Duty, a candid, sweeping examination of power, and how it has been exercised, for good and bad, by American presidents in the post-Cold War world.
-
-
Thoughtful Evaluation by Someone in the Know
- By Anonymous User on 07-11-20
By: Robert M. Gates
-
The Hell of Good Intentions
- America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy
- By: Stephen M. Walt
- Narrated by: Stephen M. Walt
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the New York Times best-selling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy - explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it.
-
-
Shifted My Thinking
- By Anonymous User on 11-07-18
By: Stephen M. Walt
-
The Line Becomes a River
- Dispatches from the Border
- By: Francisco Cantú
- Narrated by: Francisco Cantú
- Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For Francisco Cantú, the border is in the blood: His mother, a park ranger and daughter of a Mexican immigrant, raised him in the scrublands of the Southwest. Driven to understand the hard realities of the landscape he loves, Cantú joins the Border Patrol. He and his partners learn to track other humans under blistering sun and through frigid nights. They haul in the dead and deliver to detention those they find alive. Plagued by a growing awareness of his complicity in a dehumanizing enterprise, he abandons the patrol for civilian life.
-
-
A necessary read, I am thankful for
- By Anonymous User on 02-10-18
By: Francisco Cantú
-
The Delusions of Crowds
- Why People Go Mad in Groups
- By: William J. Bernstein
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inspired by Charles Mackay's 19th-century classic Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Bernstein engages with mass delusion with the same curiosity and passion, but armed with the latest scientific research that explains the biological, evolutionary, and psychosocial roots of human irrationality.
-
-
The Illusion of Delusions
- By Anonymous User on 02-12-22
-
A World in Disarray
- American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order
- By: Richard Haass
- Narrated by: Dan Woren, Richard Haass
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An examination of a world increasingly defined by disorder and a United States unable to shape the world in its image, from the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. The rules, policies, and institutions that have guided the world since World War II have largely run their course. Respect for sovereignty alone cannot uphold order in an age defined by global challenges from terrorism and the spread of nuclear weapons to climate change and cyberspace. Meanwhile, great power rivalry is returning.
-
-
An interesting summary of the "Establishment" POV
- By Anonymous User on 04-24-17
By: Richard Haass
-
Energy and Civilization
- A History
- By: Vaclav Smil
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 20 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this monumental history, Vaclav Smil provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel-driven civilization and offers listeners a magisterial overview of humanity's energy eras.
-
-
Not a good format for this book
- By Anonymous User on 05-19-18
By: Vaclav Smil
-
Jefferson
- Architect of American Liberty
- By: John B. Boles
- Narrated by: Michael Johnson
- Length: 24 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From an eminent scholar of the American South, the first full-scale biography of Thomas Jefferson since 1970. Not since Merrill Peterson's Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation has a scholar attempted to write a comprehensive biography of the most complex Founding Father. In Jefferson, John B. Boles plumbs every facet of Thomas Jefferson's life, all while situating him amid the sweeping upheaval of his times. We meet Jefferson the politician and political thinker - as well as Jefferson the architect, scientist, bibliophile, paleontologist, musician, and gourmet.
-
-
Makes Jefferson Human
- By Anonymous User on 06-23-20
By: John B. Boles
-
World Order
- By: Henry Kissinger
- Narrated by: Nicholas Hormann
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Henry Kissinger offers in World Order a deep meditation on the roots of international harmony and global disorder. Drawing on his experience as one of the foremost statesmen of the modern era Kissinger now reveals his analysis of the ultimate challenge for the 21st century: How to build a shared international order in a world of divergent historical perspectives, violent conflict, proliferating technology, and ideological extremism.
-
-
More retrospective than future oriented
- By Anonymous User on 10-23-14
By: Henry Kissinger
-
How States Think
- The Rationality of Foreign Policy
- By: John J. Mearsheimer, Sebastian Rosato
- Narrated by: Mack Sanderson
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To understand world politics, you need to understand how states think. Are states rational? Much of international relations theory assumes that they are. But many scholars believe that political leaders rarely act rationally. The issue is crucial for both the study and practice of international politics. John J. Mearsheimer and Sebastian Rosato argue that rational decisions in international politics rest on credible theories about how the world works and emerge from deliberative decision‑making processes.
-
-
2hours of content crammed into 8 hours of listening
- By Anonymous User on 02-04-24
By: John J. Mearsheimer, and others
-
Why Nations Fail
- The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
- By: Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 17 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine?
-
-
Pros and Cons of "Why Nations Fail"
- By Anonymous User on 05-01-12
By: Daron Acemoglu, and others
-
Americana
- A 400-Year History of American Capitalism
- By: Bhu Srinivasan
- Narrated by: Scott Brick, Bhu Srinivasan
- Length: 21 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the days of the Mayflower and the Virginia Company, America has been a place for people to dream, invent, build, tinker, and bet the farm in pursuit of a better life. Americana takes us on a 400-year journey of this spirit of innovation and ambition through a series of Next Big Things - the inventions, techniques, and industries that drove American history forward: from the telegraph, the railroad, guns, radio, and banking, to flight, suburbia, and sneakers, culminating with the Internet and mobile technology at the turn of the 21st century.
-
-
Excellent history!
- By L. Maranto on 10-14-17
By: Bhu Srinivasan
-
Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities
- By: Bettany Hughes
- Narrated by: Bettany Hughes
- Length: 24 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the Koran to Shakespeare, this city with three names - Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul - resonates as an idea and a place, real and imagined. Standing as the gateway between East and West, North and South, it has been the capital city of the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman Empires. For much of its history it was the very center of the world, known simply as "The City", but, as Bettany Hughes reveals, Istanbul is not just a city but a global story.
-
-
A daunting undertaking pulled off superlatively
- By Anonymous User on 12-24-17
By: Bettany Hughes
-
How to Hide an Empire
- A History of the Greater United States
- By: Daniel Immerwahr
- Narrated by: Luis Moreno
- Length: 17 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We are familiar with maps that outline all 50 states. And we are also familiar with the idea that the United States is an "empire", exercising power around the world. But what about the actual territories - the islands, atolls, and archipelagos - this country has governed and inhabited? In How to Hide an Empire, author Daniel Immerwahr tells the fascinating story of the United States outside the United States. In crackling, fast-paced prose, he reveals forgotten episodes that cast American history in a new light.
-
-
How to beat a straw man to death
- By Anonymous User on 01-25-20
By: Daniel Immerwahr
-
The Strategy of Denial
- American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict
- By: Elbridge A. Colby
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Elbridge A. Colby was the lead architect of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, the most significant revision of US defense strategy in a generation. Here he lays out how America's defense must change to address China's growing power and ambition. Based firmly in the realist tradition but deeply engaged in current policy, this book offers a clear framework for what America's goals in confronting China must be, how its military strategy must change, and how it must prioritize these goals over its lesser interests.
-
-
A Rational Liberalist Approach in a Realists World
- By Anonymous User on 06-23-23
Critic reviews
"America in the World is a highly accessible and engaging history of US diplomacy written by one of the country's smartest and most capable foreign policy practitioners. Robert Zoellick understands better than most how inseparable America's fate is from the rest of the world, and that timely lesson shines through the pages of this book." (Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright)
"Bob Zoellick has accomplished the near impossible - he has written a seminal work that is groundbreaking, historically insightful, and entertaining in a way that will appeal to scholars and general readers alike. America in the World provides a new framework for understanding the history of America's foreign policy, and is chock-full of fascinating vignettes that reveal our nation's pragmatism and innovative spirit." (Henry M. Paulson, Jr., former United States Secretary of the Treasury)
"This book is so sweeping and insightful that it will revive the art of diplomatic history. Robert Zoellick emphasizes America's pragmatic instincts, from Benjamin Franklin to George H.W. Bush, as well as the key role that technology and trade have played in furthering our influence. In addition to being a fascinating historic narrative, this book provides a great framework for understanding our role in the world today." (Walter Isaacson, number-one New York Times best-selling author of Leonardo da Vinci)
Related to this topic
-
To Build a Better World
- Choices to End the Cold War and Create a Global Commonwealth
- By: Philip Zelikow, Condoleezza Rice
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two of America's leading scholar-diplomats, Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, have combed sources in several languages, interviewed leading figures, and drawn on their own firsthand experience to bring to life the choices that molded the contemporary world. Zeroing in on the key moments of decision, the might-have-beens, and the human beings working through them, they explore both what happened and what could have happened, to show how one world ended and another took form.
-
-
Valuable historical narrative
- By Anonymous User on 04-07-22
By: Philip Zelikow, and others
-
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution: 1763-1789
- By: Robert Middlekauff
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 26 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The first book to appear in the illustrious Oxford History of the United States, this critically-acclaimed volume - a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize - offers an unsurpassed history of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the American republic.
-
-
Strong History Rich With Behind The Scenes Details
- By Anonymous User on 10-06-11
-
Saving Freedom
- Truman, the Cold War, and the Fight for Western Civilization
- By: Joe Scarborough
- Narrated by: Joe Scarborough
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
History called on Harry Truman to unite the Western world against Soviet communism, but first he had to rally Republicans and Democrats behind America’s most dramatic foreign policy shift since George Washington delivered his farewell address. How did one of the least prepared presidents to walk into the Oval Office become one of its most successful?
-
-
An engaging review of a remarkable president
- By Anonymous User on 11-29-20
By: Joe Scarborough
-
The Marshall Plan
- Dawn of the Cold War
- By: Benn Steil
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 16 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The award-winning author of The Battle of Bretton Woods reveals the gripping history behind the Marshall Plan—told with verve, insight, and resonance for today.
In the wake of World War II, with Britain’s empire collapsing and Stalin's on the rise, US officials under new secretary of state George C. Marshall set out to reconstruct western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism. Their massive, costly, and ambitious undertaking would confront Europeans and Americans alike with a vision at odds with their history and self-conceptions. In the process, they would drive the creation of NATO, the European Union, and a Western identity that continues to shape world events.
Focusing on the critical years 1947 to 1949, Benn Steil’s thrilling account brings to life the seminal episodes marking the collapse of postwar US-Soviet relations—the Prague coup, the Berlin blockade, and the division of Germany. In each case, we see and understand like never before Stalin’s determination to crush the Marshall Plan and undermine American power in Europe.
Given current echoes of the Cold War, as Putin’s Russia rattles the world order, the tenuous balance of power and uncertain order of the late 1940s is as relevant as ever. The Marshall Plan provides critical context into understanding today’s international landscape. Bringing to bear fascinating new material from American, Russian, German, and other European archives, Steil’s account will forever change how we see the Marshall Plan and the birth of the Cold War. A polished and masterly work of historical narrative, this is an instant classic of Cold War literature.
-
-
A Deeply Researched Narrative
- By Anonymous User on 10-18-18
By: Benn Steil
-
Diplomacy
- By: Henry Kissinger
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 37 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Great foreign policy overview!
- By Anonymous User on 02-02-20
By: Henry Kissinger
-
Tomorrow, the World
- The Birth of US Global Supremacy
- By: Stephen Wertheim
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Powerful punch to American dogma.
- By Anonymous User on 06-30-21
By: Stephen Wertheim
-
To Build a Better World
- Choices to End the Cold War and Create a Global Commonwealth
- By: Philip Zelikow, Condoleezza Rice
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two of America's leading scholar-diplomats, Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, have combed sources in several languages, interviewed leading figures, and drawn on their own firsthand experience to bring to life the choices that molded the contemporary world. Zeroing in on the key moments of decision, the might-have-beens, and the human beings working through them, they explore both what happened and what could have happened, to show how one world ended and another took form.
-
-
Valuable historical narrative
- By Anonymous User on 04-07-22
By: Philip Zelikow, and others
-
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution: 1763-1789
- By: Robert Middlekauff
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 26 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The first book to appear in the illustrious Oxford History of the United States, this critically-acclaimed volume - a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize - offers an unsurpassed history of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the American republic.
-
-
Strong History Rich With Behind The Scenes Details
- By Anonymous User on 10-06-11
-
Saving Freedom
- Truman, the Cold War, and the Fight for Western Civilization
- By: Joe Scarborough
- Narrated by: Joe Scarborough
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
History called on Harry Truman to unite the Western world against Soviet communism, but first he had to rally Republicans and Democrats behind America’s most dramatic foreign policy shift since George Washington delivered his farewell address. How did one of the least prepared presidents to walk into the Oval Office become one of its most successful?
-
-
An engaging review of a remarkable president
- By Anonymous User on 11-29-20
By: Joe Scarborough
-
The Marshall Plan
- Dawn of the Cold War
- By: Benn Steil
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 16 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The award-winning author of The Battle of Bretton Woods reveals the gripping history behind the Marshall Plan—told with verve, insight, and resonance for today.
In the wake of World War II, with Britain’s empire collapsing and Stalin's on the rise, US officials under new secretary of state George C. Marshall set out to reconstruct western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism. Their massive, costly, and ambitious undertaking would confront Europeans and Americans alike with a vision at odds with their history and self-conceptions. In the process, they would drive the creation of NATO, the European Union, and a Western identity that continues to shape world events.
Focusing on the critical years 1947 to 1949, Benn Steil’s thrilling account brings to life the seminal episodes marking the collapse of postwar US-Soviet relations—the Prague coup, the Berlin blockade, and the division of Germany. In each case, we see and understand like never before Stalin’s determination to crush the Marshall Plan and undermine American power in Europe.
Given current echoes of the Cold War, as Putin’s Russia rattles the world order, the tenuous balance of power and uncertain order of the late 1940s is as relevant as ever. The Marshall Plan provides critical context into understanding today’s international landscape. Bringing to bear fascinating new material from American, Russian, German, and other European archives, Steil’s account will forever change how we see the Marshall Plan and the birth of the Cold War. A polished and masterly work of historical narrative, this is an instant classic of Cold War literature.
-
-
A Deeply Researched Narrative
- By Anonymous User on 10-18-18
By: Benn Steil
-
Diplomacy
- By: Henry Kissinger
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 37 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Great foreign policy overview!
- By Anonymous User on 02-02-20
By: Henry Kissinger
-
Tomorrow, the World
- The Birth of US Global Supremacy
- By: Stephen Wertheim
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Powerful punch to American dogma.
- By Anonymous User on 06-30-21
By: Stephen Wertheim
-
The Last President of Europe
- Emmanuel Macron's Race to Revive France and Save the World
- By: William Drozdiak
- Narrated by: Paul Hodgson
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A revelatory examination of the global impact of Emmanuel Macron's tumultuous presidency. In The Last President of Europe, William Drozdiak tells with exclusive inside access the story of Macron's presidency and the political challenges the French leader continues to face.
-
-
Interesting but poorly read
- By Anonymous User on 05-12-22
By: William Drozdiak
-
A Failed Empire
- The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev
- By: Vladimir Zubok
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 20 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Focus on the Top Leadership
- By Anonymous User on 08-13-10
By: Vladimir Zubok
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
More like The West against the world
- By Anonymous User on 01-18-20
By: Angela Stent
-
Fear Itself
- The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time
- By: Ira Katznelson
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 22 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Redefining our traditional understanding of the New Deal, Fear Itself finally examines this pivotal American era through a sweeping international lens that juxtaposes a struggling democracy with enticing ideologies like Fascism and Communism. Ira Katznelson, "a towering figure in the study of American and European history" (Cornel West), boldly asserts that, during the 1930s and 1940s, American democracy was rescued yet distorted by a unified band of southern lawmakers who safeguarded racial segregation as they built a new national state to manage capitalism and assert global power.
-
-
History in Context of Political Science Analysis
- By Anonymous User on 08-27-15
By: Ira Katznelson
-
On China
- By: Henry Kissinger
- Narrated by: Nicholas Hormann
- Length: 20 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Another History of China
- By Anonymous User on 09-23-11
By: Henry Kissinger
-
America and Iran
- A History, 1720 to the Present
- By: John Ghazvinian
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 27 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this rich, fascinating history, John Ghazvinian traces the complex story of the relations between these two nations back to the Persian Empire of the 18th century - the subject of great admiration by Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams - and an America seen by Iranians as an ideal to emulate for their own government.
-
-
Distortions Galore
- By Anonymous User on 03-15-21
By: John Ghazvinian
-
The Cold War
- A World History
- By: Odd Arne Westad
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 22 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Cold War, Odd Arne Westad offers a new perspective on a century when a superpower rivalry and an ideological war transformed every corner of our globe. We traditionally think of the Cold War as a post-World War II diplomatic and military conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. But in this major new work, Westad argues that the conflict must be understood as a global ideological confrontation with roots in the industrial revolution and with continuing implications for the world today.
-
-
A lenghy treatise on the Cold War
- By Anonymous User on 11-21-17
By: Odd Arne Westad
-
Destined for War
- Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?
- By: Graham Allison
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
War with China is much more likely than anyone thinks. When Athens went to war with Sparta some 2,500 years ago, the Greek historian Thucydides identified one simple cause: A rising power threatened to displace a ruling one. As the eminent Harvard scholar Graham Allison explains, in the past 500 years, great powers have found themselves in "Thucydides's Trap" 16 times. In 12 of the 16, the results have been catastrophic.
-
-
Balances, Counter-Balances and Traps
- By Anonymous User on 10-09-17
By: Graham Allison
-
The Deluge
- The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931
- By: Adam Tooze
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 21 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the depths of the Great War, with millions dead and no imaginable end to the conflict, societies around the world began to buckle. The heart of the financial system shifted from London to New York. The infinite demands for men and materiel reached into countries far from the front. The strain of the war ravaged all economic and political assumptions, bringing unheard-of changes in the social and industrial order.
-
-
Not For The Faint of Heart
- By Anonymous User on 07-15-15
By: Adam Tooze
-
Democracy
- Stories from the Long Road to Freedom
- By: Condoleezza Rice
- Narrated by: Grace Angela Henry
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union to the ongoing struggle for human rights in the Middle East, Condoleezza Rice has served on the front lines of history. As a child, she was an eyewitness to a third awakening of freedom, when her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, became the epicenter of the civil rights movement for black Americans. In this book, Rice explains what these epochal events teach us about democracy.
-
-
A Case for Democracy
- By Anonymous User on 05-18-17
By: Condoleezza Rice
-
Asia's Reckoning
- China, Japan, and the Fate of U.S. Power in the Pacific Century
- By: Richard Mcgregor
- Narrated by: Steve West
- Length: 16 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Richard McGregor's Asia's Reckoning is a compelling account of the widening geopolitical cracks in a region that has flourished under an American security umbrella for more than half a century. The toxic rivalry between China and Japan, two Asian giants consumed with endless history wars and ruled by entrenched political dynasties, is threatening to upend the peace underwritten by Pax Americana since World War II.
-
-
Good info to learn, but...
- By Anonymous User on 02-24-18
By: Richard Mcgregor
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
A President of the UNITED States
- By Anonymous User on 09-10-20
By: Susan Eisenhower
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Back Channel
- A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal
- By: William J. Burns
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall, William J. Burns
- Length: 17 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance