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The End of Ambition
- The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era
- Narrated by: Jim Seybert
- Length: 16 hrs and 42 mins
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The End of Ambition
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Publisher's summary
At the start of the 1960s, John F. Kennedy and other American liberals expressed boundless optimism about the ability of the United States to promote democracy and development in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. With US power, resources, and expertise, almost anything seemed possible in the countries of the Cold War's "Third World"-developing, postcolonial nations unaligned with the United States or Soviet Union. Yet by the end of the decade, this vision lay in ruins. What happened? In The End of Ambition, Mark Atwood Lawrence offers a groundbreaking new history of America's most consequential decade. He reveals how the Vietnam War, combined with dizzying social and political changes in the United States, led to a collapse of American liberal ambition in the Third World-and how this transformation was connected to shrinking aspirations back home in America.
By the middle and late 1960s, democracy had given way to dictatorship in many Third World countries, while poverty and inequality remained pervasive. As America's costly war in Vietnam dragged on and as the Kennedy years gave way to the administrations of Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon, America became increasingly risk averse and embraced a new policy of promoting mere stability in the Third World.
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-
Story4 out of 5 stars 229
Russia and China are increasingly revisionist in their regions. The Middle East appears to be unraveling. And many Americans question why the United States ought to lead. What will great power competition look like in the decades ahead? What impact will geopolitics have on globalization? And what strategy should the United States pursue to succeed in an increasingly competitive world? In this book, Thomas Wright explains how major powers will compete fiercely even as they try to avoid war with each other.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Globalist propaganda
- By Anthony Colosimo Jr on 07-10-21
By: Thomas J. Wright
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The Day After
- Why America Wins the War but Loses the Peace
- By: Brendan R. Gallagher
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 78
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 69
Since 9/11, why have we won smashing battlefield victories only to botch nearly everything that comes next? In the opening phases of war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, we mopped the floor with our enemies. But in short order, things went horribly wrong. We soon discovered we had no coherent plan to manage the "day after". The ensuing debacles had truly staggering consequences - many thousands of lives lost, trillions of dollars squandered, and the apparent discrediting of our foreign policy establishment.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Experience matters
- By J. Pulton on 03-07-21
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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
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 258
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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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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
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 175
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 159
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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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The Marshall Plan
- Dawn of the Cold War
- By: Benn Steil
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 16 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 375
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 337
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 337
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.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Deeply Researched Narrative
- By Jean on 10-18-18
By: Benn Steil
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On China
- By: Henry Kissinger
- Narrated by: Nicholas Hormann
- Length: 20 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,374
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,139
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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
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Another History of China
- By Elton on 09-23-11
By: Henry Kissinger
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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
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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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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
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 27
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 27
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.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Interesting but poorly read
- By Anonymous User on 05-12-22
By: William Drozdiak
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The Russia Trap
- How Our Shadow War with Russia Could Spiral into Nuclear Catastrophe
- By: George Beebe
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 7 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 22
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 21
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 21
Every American president since the end of the Cold War has called for better relations with Russia. But each has seen relations get worse by the time he left office. Now, the two countries are facing off in a virtual war being fought without clear goals or boundaries. Why? George Beebe argues that new game-changing technologies, disappearing rules of the game, and distorted perceptions on both sides are combining to lock Washington and Moscow into an escalatory spiral that they do not recognize.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Too soft on Russia
- By Jennifer on 06-28-20
By: George Beebe
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Losing an Enemy
- Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy
- By: Trita Parsi
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 17 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 49
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 44
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Story5 out of 5 stars 45
This timely book focuses on President Obama's deeply considered strategy toward Iran's nuclear program and reveals how the historic agreement of 2015 broke the persistent stalemate in negotiations that had blocked earlier efforts. Drawing from more than 75 in-depth interviews with key decision-makers, including Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and US Secretary of State John Kerry, this is the first authoritative account of President Obama's signature foreign policy achievement.
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5 out of 5 stars
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required reading
- By Seth K on 07-18-19
By: Trita Parsi
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The Cold War
- A World History
- By: Odd Arne Westad
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 22 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 408
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 351
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 350
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.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A lenghy treatise on the Cold War
- By Donald Hill on 11-21-17
By: Odd Arne Westad
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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
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 274
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 232
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 227
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?
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5 out of 5 stars
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An engaging review of a remarkable president
- By Mark A on 11-29-20
By: Joe Scarborough
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Interventions
- By: Noam Chomsky
- Narrated by: Peter Johnson
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 63
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Story4 out of 5 stars 53
Interventions, by Noam Chomsky, is getting new press after the Pentagon banned the book from Guantanamo Bay's prison library. Interventions is Noam Chomsky at his best. Not since his all-time best-selling title, 9/11, published in the Open Media series in 2001, have readers and listeners had a timely, short, affordable Chomsky. Unlike 9/11, Interventions is a writerly work - a series of more than 30 tightly argued essays aimed at various aspects of U.S. power and politics in the post-9/11 world. While critical of U.S. military interventions around the globe, each piece in the book is in itself an intellectual intervention.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Chomsky on Fire
- By Susie on 01-09-13
By: Noam Chomsky
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The China Challenge
- Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power
- By: Thomas Christensen
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 54
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Story4 out of 5 stars 46
Many see China's rise as a threat to US leadership in Asia and beyond. Thomas J. Christensen argues instead that the real challenge lies in dissuading China from regional aggression while eliciting its global cooperation. Drawing on decades of scholarship and experience as a senior diplomat, Christensen offers a deep perspective on China's military and economic capacity. Assessing China's political outlook and strategic goals, Christensen shows how nationalism and the threat of domestic instability influence the party's decisions about regional and global affairs.
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5 out of 5 stars
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UNDERSTANDING CHINA
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 03-03-23
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America and Iran
- A History, 1720 to the Present
- By: John Ghazvinian
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 27 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 194
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 170
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Story5 out of 5 stars 170
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.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Distortions Galore
- By Chuck S. on 03-15-21
By: John Ghazvinian