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The Inevitability of Tragedy
- Henry Kissinger and His World
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 18 hrs and 46 mins
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The Inevitability of Tragedy
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Publisher's summary
A new portrait of Henry Kissinger focusing on the fundamental ideas underlying his policies: Realism, balance of power, and national interest.
Few public officials have provoked such intense controversy as Henry Kissinger. During his time in the Nixon and Ford administrations, he came to be admired and hated in equal measure. Notoriously, he believed that foreign affairs ought to be based primarily on the power relationships of a situation, not simply on ethics.
He went so far as to argue that under certain circumstances America had to protect its national interests even if that meant repressing other countries' attempts at democracy. For this reason, many today on both the right and left dismiss him as a latter-day Machiavelli, ignoring the breadth and complexity of his thought.
With The Inevitability of Tragedy, Barry Gewen corrects this shallow view, presenting the fascinating story of Kissinger's development as both a strategist and an intellectual and examining his unique role in government through his ideas. It analyzes his contentious policies in Vietnam and Chile, guided by a fresh understanding of his definition of Realism, the belief that world politics is based on an inevitable, tragic competition for power.
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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 Age of Illusions
- How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory
- By: Andrew Bacevich
- Narrated by: Andrew Bacevich, Rob Shapiro
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 124
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 107
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 107
When the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Washington establishment felt it had prevailed in a world-historical struggle. Our side had won, a verdict that was both decisive and irreversible. For the world’s “indispensable nation”, its “sole superpower”, the future looked very bright. History, having brought the United States to the very summit of power and prestige, had validated American-style liberal democratic capitalism as universally applicable.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Badly named, but pretty good overall
- By Brian on 02-20-20
By: Andrew Bacevich
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When the Facts Change
- Essays, 1995-2010
- By: Tony Judt
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 32
In When the Facts Change, Tony Judt's widow and fellow historian Jennifer Homans has assembled an essential collection of the most important and influential pieces written in the last 15 years of Judt's life, the years in which he found his voice in the public sphere. Included are seminal essays on the full range of Judt's concerns, including Europe as an idea and in reality, before 1989 and thereafter; Israel, the Holocaust and the Jews; American hyperpower and the world after 9/11.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Essential
- By Herman Utik on 09-19-16
By: Tony Judt
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Fascism: The Career of a Concept
- By: Paul Gottfried
- Narrated by: Kevin Moriarty
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Story5 out of 5 stars 37
What does it mean to label someone a fascist? Today, it is equated with denouncing him or her as a Nazi. But as intellectual historian Paul E. Gottfried writes in this provocative yet even-handed study, the term's meaning has evolved over the years. Gottfried examines the semantic twists and turns the term has endured since the 1930s and traces the word's polemical function within the context of present ideological struggles.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Refreshing scholarly treatment of a widely misused concept
- By Minister of the Posterior on 01-15-24
By: Paul Gottfried
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The Paranoid Style in American Politics
- By: Richard Hofstadter, Sean Wilentz - foreward
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 53
This timely reissue of Richard Hofstadter's classic work on the fringe groups that influence American electoral politics offers an invaluable perspective on contemporary domestic affairs. In The Paranoid Style in American Politics, acclaimed historian Richard Hofstadter examines the competing forces in American political discourse and how fringe groups can influence - and derail - the larger agendas of a political party.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Written in the 50s and 60s...
- By Kindle Customer on 11-06-19
By: Richard Hofstadter, and others
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The Jungle Grows Back
- America and Our Imperiled World
- By: Robert Kagan
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 274
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 240
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 237
Recent years have brought deeply disturbing developments around the globe. American sentiment seems to be leaning increasingly toward withdrawal in the face of such disarray. In this powerful, urgent essay, Robert Kagan elucidates the reasons why American withdrawal would be the worst possible response, based as it is on a fundamental and dangerous misreading of the world. Like a jungle that keeps growing back after being cut down, the world has always been full of dangerous actors who, left unchecked, possess the desire and ability to make things worse.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Out of date: covid, Trump nobel nominations etc
- By David on 11-13-18
By: Robert Kagan
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Reappraisals
- Reflections on the Forgotten 20th Century
- By: Tony Judt
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 16 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 160
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 91
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 89
The accelerating changes of the past generation have been accompanied by a similarly accelerated amnesia. The 20th century has become "history" at an unprecedented rate. The world of 2007 was so utterly unlike that of even 1987, much less any earlier time, that we have lost touch with our immediate past even before we have begun to make sense of it - and the results are proving calamitous.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Superb. Insightful essays, Performance to match
- By Louis on 05-02-12
By: Tony Judt
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American Rule
- How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People
- By: Jared Yates Sexton
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 254
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 214
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 213
In American Rule, Jared Yates Sexton upends those convenient fictions by laying bare the foundational myths at the heart of our collective American imagination. From the very origins of this nation, Americans in power have abused and subjugated others; enabling that corruption are the many myths of American exceptionalism and steadfast values, which are fed to the public and repeated across generations.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Truth
- By Laurie on 09-28-20
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The Great Delusion
- Liberal Dreams and International Realities
- By: John J. Mearsheimer
- Narrated by: Noah Michael Levine
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 446
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 373
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 368
In this major statement, the renowned international-relations scholar John Mearsheimer argues that liberal hegemony, the foreign policy pursued by the United States since the Cold War ended, is doomed to fail. It makes far more sense, he maintains, for Washington to adopt a more restrained foreign policy based on a sound understanding of how nationalism and realism constrain great powers abroad.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Dense, fact filled, sober analysis and prescription
- By John Brynjolfsson on 12-15-18
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Fascism
- A Warning
- By: Madeleine Albright
- Narrated by: Madeleine Albright
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 4,479
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,974
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3,937
At the end of the 1980s, when the Cold War ended, many, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, believed that democracy had triumphed politically once and for all. Yet nearly 30 years later, the direction of history no longer seems certain. A repressive and destructive force has begun to reemerge on the global stage - sweeping across Europe, parts of Asia, and the United States - that to Albright, looks very much like fascism.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Warning!
- By JAL on 04-19-18
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The Demon in Democracy
- Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies
- By: Ryszard Legutko, John O'Sullivan, Teresa Adelson
- Narrated by: Liam Gerrard
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 90
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 78
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 78
Ryszard Legutko lived and suffered under communism for decades - and he fought with the Polish anti-communist movement to abolish it. Having lived for two decades under a liberal democracy, however, he has discovered that these two political systems have a lot more in common than one might think. They both stem from the same historical roots in early modernity, and accept similar presuppositions about history, society, religion, politics, culture, and human nature.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Important book on political philosophy
- By Wayne on 08-02-19
By: Ryszard Legutko, and others
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Heaven on Earth
- The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of Socialism
- By: Joshua Muravchik
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 79
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Story5 out of 5 stars 61
Socialism was man's most ambitious attempt to supplant religion with a doctrine claiming to ground itself in "science". Each failure to create societies of abundance or give birth to "the New Man" inspired more searching for the path to the promised land: revolution, communes, social democracy, communism, fascism, Arab socialism, African socialism. None worked, and some exacted a staggering human toll. Then, after two centuries of wishful thinking and bitter disappointment, socialism imploded in a fin de siecle drama of falling walls and collapsing regimes.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A biased yet informative masterpiece
- By CodyPeacock12349 on 04-04-21
By: Joshua Muravchik
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The Mighty and the Almighty
- Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs
- By: Madeleine Albright
- Narrated by: Madeleine Albright
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 94
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 32
Does America have a special mission, derived from God, to bring liberty and democracy to the world? How much influence does the Christian right have over U.S. foreign policy? And how should America deal with violent Islamist extremists? Madeleine Albright, the former Secretary of State and best-selling author of Madam Secretary, offers a thoughtful and often surprising look at the role of religion in shaping America's approach to the world.
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4 out of 5 stars
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The point??
- By Thomas on 11-04-06
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Democracy Incorporated
- Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism
- By: Sheldon S. Wolin
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 259
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 215
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 211
Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable: has America unwittingly morphed into a new and strange kind of political hybrid, one where economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled? Can the nation check its descent into what the author terms "inverted totalitarianism"? Wolin portrays a country where citizens are politically uninterested and submissive - and where elites are eager to keep them that way.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Essential listening....
- By M. Levine on 02-25-11
By: Sheldon S. Wolin
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Bland Fanatics
- Liberals, the West, and the Afterlives of Empire
- By: Pankaj Mishra
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 22
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Story5 out of 5 stars 22
In America and in England, faltering economies at home and failed wars abroad have generated a political and intellectual hysteria. It is a derangement manifested in a number of ways: nostalgia for imperialism, xenophobic paranoia, and denunciations of an allegedly intolerant left. These symptoms can be found even among the most informed of Anglo-America.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Historical Liberalism on deathbed
- By Mehran Asdigha on 11-13-20
By: Pankaj Mishra
What listeners say about The Inevitability of Tragedy
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- G. Ozag
- 07-16-22
Superb analysis
One of the best written books I’ve read in the past decade. Anyone who is curious about Henry Kissinger and what he accomplished will find great satisfaction in reading this book.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Donald Harvey Marks
- 06-05-22
difficult and tedious
Difficult and tedious, I often thought it should have been titled "The Tragedy of Inevitability." Following is link to my podcast on Henry Kissinger, conflicted Jew, former Secretary of State and National Security advisor. Was he an agent for good or an evil war criminal? The greatest Secretary of State of our time? Only time will tell but I offer a number of different perspectives on the subject of Super K. http://bit.ly/3jlf76x
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- K T.
- 01-07-21
Well Groomed
This book is extraordinarily well positioned in that each subtopic to the overall premise is introduced in a succinct order that provides the reader/listener with a knowledgeable foundation before understanding the processes employed in practice to the philosophical influences and abstracts utilized. This unique analysis assists in understanding what came to comprise the attitudes, and various personas that dominate US Foreign Policy decision making.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- K
- 02-17-21
Interesting but rambles
Not sure why a complete chapter on Arend and Strauss was needed. Various sections rambled on although well written.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Philo
- 11-05-22
Times and thinkers that made Kissinger tick
There is an extended reflection on the history and intellectuals that most influenced Kissinger. I was surprised to see Nietzsche here, and I was not familiar with Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt. The book then moves to various of Kissinger's signature policies, in light of these influences, and places Kissinger against a backdrop of recent schools of thought in US foreign policy.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Stanley
- 05-28-23
Great book
Entirely enticing and inspiring!! Having read all Kissinger’s books and his biography, I found this book adds another dimension of this complicated diplomat. I would find other books by this author.
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