The best books of 2023

This list is part of the best books of 2023.

Join 1,707 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of The World Imagined: Collective Beliefs and Political Order in the Sinocentric, Islamic and Southeast Asian International Societies

Andrei P. Tsygankov Why did I love this book?

The most important development in the world concerns the reconstitution of the world along post-Western lines. The value of Spryut’s book is that it reintroduces an imperial perspective to the discipline of international relations.

The book describes how imperial international relations functioned in the Middle East, northern and southern Asia. The author focuses on their collective beliefs, demonstrating how much these beliefs and resulting outcomes differed from those in the West and its Westphalia-based state system.

The book reminds us of what the world was like when the West was less powerful and what may be about to become now that the Western hegemony is shattered.

By Hendrik Spruyt,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The World Imagined as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Taking an inter-disciplinary approach, Spruyt explains the political organization of three non-European international societies from early modernity to the late nineteenth century. The Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires; the Sinocentric tributary system; and the Southeast Asian galactic empires, all which differed in key respects from the modern Westphalian state system. In each of these societies, collective beliefs were critical in structuring domestic orders and relations with other polities. These multi-ethnic empires allowed for greater accommodation and heterogeneity in comparison to the homogeneity that is demanded by the modern nation-state. Furthermore, Spruyt examines the encounter between these non-European systems and the…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of Before the West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders

Andrei P. Tsygankov Why did I love this book?

Continuing with the theme of the post-Western world, this book reveals and reestablishes one particular narrative of international relations from the Eastern perspective.

It challenges the established Western concepts such as sovereignty, great power, modernity, industrial revolution, and international order by providing an alternative world history. The world existed before the West and was not collapsing despite the absence of a “benevolent hegemon.”

By looking into the organization of the Mongol empire as a hierarchical prelude to emerging imperial orders in Eurasia, the book suggests historical and analytic paths for understanding the roots of the contemporary world and its potential future. this book should be studied by all interested in a global/comparative IR theory. 

By Ayse Zarakol,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Before the West as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

How would the history of international relations in 'the East' be written if we did not always read the ending - the Rise of the West and the decline of the East - into the past? What if we did not assume that Asia was just a residual category, a variant of 'not-Europe', but saw it as a space of with its own particular history and sociopolitical dynamics, not defined only by encounters with European colonialism? How would our understanding of sovereignty, as well as our theories about the causes of the decline of Great Powers and international orders, change…


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My 3rd favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of E. H. Carr: Imperialism, War and Lessons for Post-Colonial IR

Andrei P. Tsygankov Why did I love this book?

Finally, if we are to understand the intellectual foundations of the post-Western world in terms of IR isms, then we ought to study the power/culture intersection well.

For these reasons, as this book does, it’s important to consider the potential dialogue between classical realism of scholars such as E.H. Carr and Hans Morgenthau, on the one hand, and post-colonial theorists including Frantz Fanon, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Aimé Césaire, on the other. Both sides have much to benefit from each other in understanding the phenomena of race, imperialism, and war. 

By Haro L. Karkour,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked E. H. Carr as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book highlights important parallels between Carr and three influential figures in the first wave of post-colonialism-DuBois, Cesaire and Fanon-on the analysis of imperialism and the causes of war. Specifically, Carr's analysis of imperialism and war parallels the first wave post-colonial thinkers in two respects. First, Carr's work historically situates imperialism in the context of the social question in Western democracies. Second, Carr's work provides an ideology critique to Enlightenment rationalism, which postulates that 'reason could determine what [are] the universally valid moral laws' and thus 'by the voice of reason men could be persuaded both to save their own…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

The "Russian Idea" in International Relations: Civilization and National Distinctiveness

By Andrei P. Tsygankov,

Book cover of The "Russian Idea" in International Relations: Civilization and National Distinctiveness

What is my book about?

The "Russian Idea" in International Relations (IR) identifies different approaches within Russian Civilizational tradition as distinctive from those established in the West. Civilizational ideas in IR theory express states’ cultural identification and stress religious traditions, social customs, and economic and political values. The book analyzes three schools of Russian civilizational thinking about international relations – Slavophiles, Communists, and Eurasianists. Each school focuses on Russia’s distinctive spiritual, social, and geographic roots. Each is internally divided between those claiming Russia’s exceptionalism, potentially resulting in regional autarchy or imperial expansion, and those advocating the Russian Idea as global in its appeal.