Since I read George Kennan’s award-winning memoirs when I was still in high school, I have been fascinated by world history in general and specifically by the Soviet Union (Russia) and Central/Eastern Europe. I have a PhD in Russian studies and my 40+ year career has included academia, government, non-profit organizations, and the foundation sector. My professional experience has reinforced my belief that to understand today’s world and to formulate effective national security strategy one must study the roots of political, economic, or social events.
I wrote
Cold War Radio: The Russian Broadcasts of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Chip War shows better than any book I have ever read just how integrated our world is and how dependent we are on other countries, especially in high-end technology.
Without chips from Taiwan or lithography from The Netherlands, we would be unable to operate our smartphones or computers. Chris Miller makes a persuasive case for why we must defend Taiwan’s independence while we build chip manufacturing in the US.
***Winner of the Financial Times Business Book of the Year award***
'Pulse quickening. A nonfiction thriller - equal parts The China Syndrome and Mission Impossible' New York Times
An epic account of the decades-long battle to control the world's most critical resource-microchip technology
Power in the modern world - military, economic, geopolitical - is built on a foundation of computer chips. America has maintained its lead as a superpower because it has dominated advances in computer chips and all the technology that chips have enabled. (Virtually everything runs on chips: cars, phones, the stock market, even the electric grid.) Now…
In The Peacemaker, William Inboden draws on declassified materials, interviews with high-level government officials, and on Reagan’s personal diary to write the most thorough, fair, and scrupulously researched account of Reagan’s foreign policy and the successful end of the Cold War.
And he does this with such aplomb that his history reads like a novel. I worked in the US government in the 1980s and thought I knew Reagan’s foreign policy well, but I discovered much that was new and couldn’t put the book down.
One of the Wall Street Journal’sbest political books of 2022
A masterful account of how Ronald Reagan and his national security team confronted the Soviets, reduced the nuclear threat, won the Cold War, and supported the spread of freedom around the world.
“Remarkable… a great read.”—Robert Gates • “Mesmerizing… hard to put down.”—Paul Kennedy • “Full of fresh information… will shape all future studies of the role the United States played in ending the Cold War.”—John Lewis Gaddis • “A major contribution to our understanding of the Reagan presidency and the twilight of the Cold War era.”—David Kennedy
The Model Spy is based on the true story of Toto Koopman, who spied for the Allies and Italian Resistance during World War II.
Largely unknown today, Toto was arguably the first woman to spy for the British Intelligence Service. Operating in the hotbed of Mussolini's Italy, she courted danger…
In Civil War by Other Means, Jeremi Suri begins with the January 6, 2021 insurrection and shows how the roots of that riot go back to Confederate resistance to a more equal America that began immediately after the cessation of active hostilities.
In a sense, for many Southerners the Civil War never ended. Some left the US for Mexico, along with their slaves. Others maintained apartheid policies through control of the ballot box. Suri weaves a compelling story, based on a thorough examination of archives, that every American should know.
The Civil War may have ended on the battlefield, but the fight for equality never did
In 1865, the Confederacy was comprehensively defeated, its economy shattered, its leaders in exile or in jail. Yet in the years that followed, Lincoln’s vision of a genuinely united country never took root. Apart from a few brief months, when the presence of the Union army in the South proved liberating for newly freed Black Americans, the military victory was squandered. Old white supremacist efforts returned, more ferocious than before.
In Civil War by Other Means, Jeremi Suri shows how resistance to a more…
Jack Snyder addresses one of the most important issues of our times: how to protect human rights.
Based on thorough research, Snyder develops an innovative roadmap for dealing with a broad agenda of human rights issues: impunity from atrocities, dilemmas of free speech in the age of social media, and the entrenched abuses of women and children.
The brutal Russian war on Ukraine further underscores the need for the international community to protect human rights and to punish those who violate them.
An innovative framework for advancing human rights
Human rights are among our most pressing issues today, yet rights promoters have reached an impasse in their effort to achieve rights for all. Human Rights for Pragmatists explains why: activists prioritize universal legal and moral norms, backed by the public shaming of violators, but in fact rights prevail only when they serve the interests of powerful local constituencies. Jack Snyder demonstrates that where local power and politics lead, rights follow. He presents an innovative roadmap for addressing a broad agenda of human rights concerns: impunity for atrocities, dilemmas of free speech in…
Trapped in her enormous, devout Catholic family in 1963, Annie creates a hilarious campaign of lies when the pope dies and their family friend, Cardinal Stefanucci, is unexpectedly on the shortlist to be elected the first American pope.
Driven to elevate her family to the holiest of holy rollers in…
Drawing on over 25 years as a foreign correspondent in Russia, Owen Matthews takes us through the roots of the most serious geopolitical crisis since World War II.
He cites interviews with former Kremlin insiders, testimony of captured Russian soldiers, and his own on-the-ground reporting. Matthew’s account of the war is the best I have read and it has helped me to understand not only the origins of the invasion but the consequences of this brutal war.
An astonishing investigation into the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war - from the corridors of the Kremlin to the trenches of Mariupol.
The Russo-Ukrainian War is the most serious geopolitical crisis since the Second World War - and yet at the heart of the conflict is a mystery. Vladimir Putin apparently lurched from a calculating, subtle master of opportunity to a reckless gambler, putting his regime - and Russia itself - at risk of destruction. Why?
Drawing on over 25 years' experience as a correspondent in Moscow, as…
Cold War Radio examines the cultural, intellectual, and political impact of the Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), the international shortwave broadcasters funded by the United States Government throughout the Cold War.
Mark Pomar takes readers inside the two radio stations to show how the broadcasts were conceived and developed and the impact they had on international broadcasting, U.S.-Soviet relations, Russian political and cultural history, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. His nuanced analysis of the broadcasts sheds light on the multifaceted role the radios played during the Cold War, ranging from instruments of U.S. Cold War policy to repositories of independent Russian culture, literature, philosophy, religion, and the arts.
