Social Diplomacy

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.

Drawing on extensive interviews with George Kennan and exclusive access to his archives, an eminent scholar of the Cold War delivers a revelatory biography of its troubled mastermind. This is a landmark work of history and biography that reveals the vast influence and rich inner landscape of a life that both mirrored and shaped the century it spanned.

The task of implementing an effective American policy and cementing Afghan rule is hampered by what Isby sees as separate but overlapping conflicts between terrorism, narcotics, and regional rivalries, each presenting separate yet equally challenging issues to resolve. This book provides the road map to overcoming these obstacles and finding a way forward for the U.S. and the Afghan nation.

Not since the last American troops left Vietnam have we faced such a sudden vacuum in our foreign policy—not only of authority, but also of explanations of what happened, and what the future holds. Few analysts are better poised to address this moment than Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad, intellectuals and critics whose work spans generations and continents.

For centuries, diplomacy has been humanity’s most elegant disguise for deceit. Treaties are broken before their ink dries, and the pursuit of peace has become a theatre of power. Algorithmic Diplomacy tears away this illusion, asking the most dangerous question of the twenty-first century: what if the only path to lasting peace is to surrender politics to reason itself? Boris Kriger envisions a world where nations speak not through fear and vanity, but through a transparent architecture of artificial intelligences bound by international law.

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.

A character-driven history that describes the bizarrely ill-suited alliance between America and Pakistan, written by a uniquely insightful participant: Pakistan's former ambassador to the US. The relationship between America and Pakistan is based on mutual incomprehension, and always has been. Pakistan - to American eyes - has gone from being a stabilizing friend to an essential military ally to a seedbed of terror.

Maps have a mysterious hold over us. Whether ancient, crumbling parchments or generated by Google, maps tell us things we want to know, not only about our current location or where we are going but about the world in general. And yet, when it comes to geo-politics, much of what we are told is generated by analysts and other experts who have neglected to refer to a map of the place in question.

James A. Baker III uses his unique perspective to take us inside those events and the personalities involved in them: the collapse of Communism, the Berlin Wall, and the Soviet Union itself; the reunification of Germany; the remarkable negotiations behind the coalition-building of the Gulf War; and the even more remarkable talks that led Israelis and Arabs to the same conference table for the first time in decades.

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.

American diplomacy is under siege. Offices across the State Department sit empty while abroad, the military-industrial complex has assumed the work once undertaken by peacemakers. We're becoming a nation that shoots first and asks questions later. In an astonishing account ranging from Washington, DC, to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and North Korea in the years since 9/11, acclaimed journalist and former diplomat Ronan Farrow illuminates one of the most consequential and poorly understood changes in American history.

Smedley Butler was the most celebrated warfighter of his time. Best-selling books were written about him. Hollywood adored him. Wherever the flag went, “The Fighting Quaker” went - serving in nearly every major overseas conflict from the Spanish War of 1898 until the eve of World War II.

Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize, renowned historian Margaret MacMillan's best-selling Paris 1919 is the story of six remarkable months that changed the world. At the close of WWI, between January and July of 1919, delegates from around the world converged on Paris under the auspices of peace. New countries were created, old empires were dissolved, and for six months, Paris was the center of the world.

This prize-winning and critically acclaimed history uses foreign relations as the lens through which to tell the story of America's dramatic rise from 13 disparate colonies huddled along the Atlantic coast to the world's greatest superpower.

In Middle East Crises, veteran American diplomat James Jeffrey offers a compelling, first-hand account of U.S. foreign policy and crisis management in the Middle East from 2004 to 2020. Drawing on his decades-long career as a Foreign Service Officer, Jeffrey takes listeners behind the scenes of some of the most consequential moments in recent Middle Eastern history.

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.

John Quincy Adams was the last of his kind - a Puritan from the age of the Founders who despised party and compromise yet dedicated himself to politics and government. The son of John Adams, he was a brilliant ambassador and secretary of state, a frustrated president at a historic turning point in American politics, and a dedicated congressman who literally died in office - at the age of 80, in the House of Representatives, in the midst of an impassioned political debate.

What happens when you take on the establishment? In Adults in the Room, renowned economist and former finance minister of Greece Yanis Varoufakis gives the full, blistering account of his momentous clash with the mightiest economic and political forces on earth.

As well as offering an engaging and insightful account of a 40-year career spent in the upper echelons of the diplomatic and political worlds (and which included four years in pre-revolutionary Iran in addition to his 14 years in Turkey, France and the USA), They Call It Diplomacy sets out to explain what diplomats actually do; mounts a vigorous defence of the continuing relevance of the diplomat in an age of instant communication, social media and special envoys; and details what Westmacott sees as some of the successes of recent British diplomacy.

While most historians of the Vietnam War focus on the origins of US involvement and the Americanization of the conflict, Lien-Hang T. Nguyen examines the international context in which North Vietnamese leaders pursued the war and American intervention ended. This riveting narrative takes the listener from the marshy Mekong Delta swamps to the bomb-saturated Red River Delta, from the corridors of power in Hanoi and Saigon to the Nixon White House, and from the peace negotiations in Paris to high-level meetings in Beijing and Moscow.