Here are 77 books that Blue Helmet Bureaucrats fans have personally recommended if you like
Blue Helmet Bureaucrats.
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I’m a historian and professor in Louisiana, in the southern United States. When I was an undergraduate in college (many years ago!), I embraced the opportunity to study diverse subjects, ranging from the natural sciences to the humanities. I became fascinated by medicine and health and their relationship to history, society, and international relations–and have remained fascinated ever since. These interests led me to study humanitarianism and its place in 20th-century US foreign relations and international history. Over the years, I have researched and written two books and more than 20 articles on these subjects, and I love sharing this history with readers and students alike.
This book opened my eyes to the long and fraught history of humanitarian interventions–that is, military operations conducted in the name of protecting people from harm and suffering.
In recent decades, we have witnessed fierce debates over the legitimacy of these activities (in places like Rwanda, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria). Yet, as this book persuasively shows, such concerns are nothing new. Across the nineteenth century, government leaders and citizens debated–and undertook–many so-called “wars for humanity.”
With examples stretching from the Middle East to Africa to the Americas, this book raises provocative and important ethical questions about humanitarianism and human rights, both historically and today.
In the Cause of Humanity is a major new history of the emergence of the theory and practice of humanitarian intervention during the nineteenth century when the question of whether, when and how the international community should react to violations of humanitarian norms and humanitarian crises first emerged as a key topic of controversy and debate. Fabian Klose investigates the emergence of legal debates on the protection of humanitarian norms by violent means, revealing how military intervention under the banner of humanitarianism became closely intertwined with imperial and colonial projects. Through case studies including the international fight against the slave…
I’m a historian and professor in Louisiana, in the southern United States. When I was an undergraduate in college (many years ago!), I embraced the opportunity to study diverse subjects, ranging from the natural sciences to the humanities. I became fascinated by medicine and health and their relationship to history, society, and international relations–and have remained fascinated ever since. These interests led me to study humanitarianism and its place in 20th-century US foreign relations and international history. Over the years, I have researched and written two books and more than 20 articles on these subjects, and I love sharing this history with readers and students alike.
More than a century has passed since the First World War, but this book shows us that its humanitarian legacies are well worth remembering.
I appreciate this book for many reasons, but most of all, for the truly global perspective its authors take. They make it clear that the Great War was truly a world war. More than this, it should be remembered as a global humanitarian crisis. The authors examine many diverse efforts to assist both soldiers and civilians while also considering the messy politics involved in these relief efforts.
I find this book valuable for revealing the complex relationships between aid workers and relief recipients, a dynamic as central today as it was 100 years ago.
This book provides fresh perspectives on a key period in the history of humanitarianism. Drawing on economic, cultural, social and diplomatic perspectives, it explores the scale and meaning of humanitarianism in the era of the Great War. Foregrounding the local and global dimensions of the humanitarian responses, it interrogates the entanglement of humanitarian and political interests and uncovers the motivations and agency of aid donors, relief workers and recipients. The chapters probe the limits of humanitarian engagement in a period of unprecedented violence and suffering and evaluate its long-term impact on humanitarian action.
I’m a historian and professor in Louisiana, in the southern United States. When I was an undergraduate in college (many years ago!), I embraced the opportunity to study diverse subjects, ranging from the natural sciences to the humanities. I became fascinated by medicine and health and their relationship to history, society, and international relations–and have remained fascinated ever since. These interests led me to study humanitarianism and its place in 20th-century US foreign relations and international history. Over the years, I have researched and written two books and more than 20 articles on these subjects, and I love sharing this history with readers and students alike.
The 1949 Geneva Conventions are often viewed as a progressive and self-evident response to the horrors of the Second World War, but this book shows that their development was a highly contested and deeply politicized process.
I greatly appreciated the depth and rigor of the author’s research. By examining archival sources from ten countries and in multiple languages, van Dijk shows that the drafters of this landmark development in international humanitarian law had competing priorities and interests. The decisions and compromises they made in the 1940s shaped the future of warfare in profound ways.
In addition to teaching me about history, this book helped me to understand the consequences for civilians caught in today’s global conflicts.
The 1949 Geneva Conventions are the most important rules for armed conflict ever formulated. To this day they continue to shape contemporary debates about regulating warfare, but their history is often misunderstood.
For most observers, the drafters behind these treaties were primarily motivated by liberal humanitarian principles and the shock of the atrocities of the Second World War. This book tells a different story, showing how the final text of the Conventions, far from being an unabashedly liberal blueprint, was the outcome of a series of political struggles among the drafters. It also concerned a great deal more than simply…
I’m a historian and professor in Louisiana, in the southern United States. When I was an undergraduate in college (many years ago!), I embraced the opportunity to study diverse subjects, ranging from the natural sciences to the humanities. I became fascinated by medicine and health and their relationship to history, society, and international relations–and have remained fascinated ever since. These interests led me to study humanitarianism and its place in 20th-century US foreign relations and international history. Over the years, I have researched and written two books and more than 20 articles on these subjects, and I love sharing this history with readers and students alike.
Connecting the recent past with our contemporary moment, this book shows that humanitarian agendas have shaped the post-Cold War world in deeply unsettling ways.
I love this book because it brings together both academics and practitioners in a single volume, putting them into conversation with each other. All of the contributors are specialists in humanitarianism, but they approach this subject from very different angles and perspectives. Together, they raise provocative questions about humanitarian governance in the 21st century.
This book made me think deeply about the political and economic relationships involved in humanitarian activities. Above all, it invites us to learn from the less savory aspects of the history of humanitarianism in order to build a better humanitarian system in the future.
For many liberal commentators at the turn of the 1990s, the collapse of the Soviet Union represented a final victory for Western reason and capitalist democracy. But, in recent years, liberal norms and institutions associated with the post-Cold War moment have been challenged by a visceral and affective politics. Electorates have increasingly opted for a closing inwards of the nation-state, not just in the democratic heartlands of Europe and North America, but also on the periphery of the world economy. As the popular appeal of the 'open society' is thrown into question, it is necessary to revisit assumptions about the…
I am a work in progress, on my way to becoming a conscious communicator and an even better human being. I believe that intentional communication and (the) quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives, careers, and societies. I’ve spent decades guiding people and cultures to foster open communication, cultivate self-understanding, and deepen trust, from large Fortune 500 to small businesses. Building communication skills is a practice that leads to self-transformation and finding meaning, and happiness. Each of these books will help you to better understand yourself and others, and learn to communicate at the level of trust.
A practical guide to understanding yourself, understanding others, and how to improve workplace relationships through better communication.
If you’ve been in the workplace for any length of time, you know that collaboration is a must for career success and that there’s usually at least one challenging person that can destroy trust and tank your productivity. In this book, you’ll learn strategies for identifying the eight types of difficult co-workers and gain insights into their motivations.
She also provides actionable advice for how to step into these difficult conversations, so you can build better relationships.
Named one of "22 new books...that you should consider reading before the year is out" by Fortune
"This practical and empathetic guide to taking the high road is worth a look for workers lost in conflict." - Publisher's Weekly
A research-based, practical guide for how to handle difficult people at work.
Work relationships can be hard. The stress of dealing with difficult people dampens our creativity and productivity, degrades our ability to think clearly and make sound decisions, and causes us to disengage. We might lie awake at night worrying, withdraw from work, or react in ways we later regret-rolling…
I’m a serial adventurer and entrepreneur who loves to read, teach, and encounter our world in as many different ways as I can. I am an innately curious programmer and a goal-oriented completionist at heart. I’ve cruised around America’s Great Loop, run a marathon, written more than fifteen books, and been involved with many small businesses. I also love to work with new programming languages. I was around for the early days of the Java, Ruby, and Elixir programming languages. I built teams to build products using each one of them. My passion is to help programmers break through their blockers with fresh insights.
Adoption and change often lead to the kind of conflict that regularly breaks people.
I find that creators are often equipped to deal with technical creation, but are rarely equipped to deal with conflict. In this book, Amanda Ripley walks through how several skilled professionals found themselves in conflict.
Then she walks through how those conflicts started, who the players are, how they interact, how to engage in healthy conflict, and eventually how to get back out again.
Many of my peers in open-source technology, especially creators of languages and frameworks, find themselves in conflict and don’t have the tools to deal with it.
This book helped me think of conflict in a systematic way, and how to plot a course back out again.
When we are baffled by the insanity of the "other side"-in our politics, at work, or at home-it's because we aren't seeing how the conflict itself has taken over.
That's what "high conflict" does. It's the invisible hand of our time. And it's different from the useful friction of healthy conflict. That's good conflict, and it's a necessary force that pushes us to be better people.
High conflict, by contrast, is what happens when discord distills into a good-versus-evil kind of feud, the kind with an us and a them. In this state, the normal rules of engagement no longer…
I am passionate about helping people have the kinds of opportunities they want to have in their careers. I coach, teach, speak and write on how to do exactly that. The secret – it almost always involves getting out of your comfort zone, doing something that is a bit scary to you and that shakes your confidence a bit. However, you never want to be sitting alone trying to achieve something all by yourself. It takes a village to succeed. The art comes in knowing how to ask, getting over your fear of being vulnerable, building trust, knowing how to persuade each person you need, and much more. This is my life’s work.
To do more and to lead a team of experts, conflict is necessary to get a great outcome. Some people are comfortable with conflict, some are not. Either way, as a leader, you need a toolkit on what to do and not to do to de-escalate tension and develop healthy debate. This book is the best toolkit I know.
A practical resource, this book combines tips, checklists, exercises, and stories to outline concrete processes that improve the way leaders, managers, and anyone within an organization responds to conflict. Beginning with a series of questions and self-diagnostics, the authors show you how to: maintain emotional balance in the face of conflict; implement constructive communications techniques; help others deal with conflicts that are causing organization problems; establish norms for handling conflict; use specific approaches for addressing conflict more effectively. "A must-have guidebook for the new age of global business. This book shows every leader how to turn feelings of fear into…
For my psychology podcast, I’ve interviewed many political and psychology experts on the subject of political polarization and conflict resolution. That led to me writing my book Defusing American Anger. I believe extreme us-vs-them polarization is humanity’s biggest problem: I see it as an existential threat not just to specific nations, including America, but to humanity as a whole, especially as our weapons and technologies get more powerful. And I think we need more people working on reducing our seemingly natural tendency to always be fighting with each other.
This book is not about America, and not directly about politics or political polarization. It's a well-known conflict resolution book. I included it because I think it might help some people see our divides through a different and more healthy lens.
This book uses an engaging fictional premise to walk through some important points about resolving conflict. For example, it talks about how even when we're sure we're right in a conflict (as most people in conflicts tend to be), we may still be wrong in how we treat others. And it talks about how our animosity and contempt towards others can cause them to behave in the very ways that most upset us.
From the authors of Leadership and Self-Deception (over 2 million copies sold) comes a new edition of this bestseller that has been thoroughly revised to more effectively address the diversity, equity, and inclusion challenges that plague our communities and hinder our organizations.
What if conflicts at home, at work, and in the world stem from the same root cause? What if we systematically misunderstand that cause? And what if, as a result, we unwittingly perpetuate the very problems we think we are trying to solve?
The Anatomy of Peace uses a fictional story of an Arab and a Jew—both of…
For 30 years, my books, articles, and talks have warned the U.S. failure/refusal to work with Russia and the Europeans to forge a new system of global security after the Cold War could provoke a Russian nationalist backlash, a war between Moscow and Kyiv, and possibly major power conflict. My bookWorld War Trump warned that Trump could stage a coup. Toward an Alternative Transatlantic Strategy warned Biden’s support for Ukraine would provoke conflict with Russia. I have also written poems and novels on IR theory, plus two novels based on my experiences in China during the tumultuous years of 1988-89 and in France during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is a unique book that, based on Greek tragedy, develops a deeper, philosophical understanding of the Ukraine-Russia conflict, with an eye toward conflict resolution.
In closely examining that conflict, with Russian language sources, and from a historical and rare socio-cultural-linguistic perspective, Petro’s book shows how an essentially local/regional dispute over the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine has helped to generate a horrific conflict.
Given the fact that most books on the “second” Cold War examine the conflict from an international perspective, this book shows how a “local” dispute has blossomed into a “globalizing” conflict.
The conflict in Ukraine has deep domestic roots. A third of the population, primarily in the East and South, regards its own Russian cultural identity as entirely compatible with a Ukrainian civic identity. The state's reluctance to recognize this ethnos as a legitimate part of the modern Ukrainian nation, has created a tragic cycle that entangles Ukrainian politics.
The Tragedy of Ukraine argues that in order to untangle the conflict within the Ukraine, it must be addressed on an emotional, as well as institutional level. It draws on Richard Ned Lebow's 'tragic vision of politics' and on classical Greek tragedy…
Jim Tamm was a Senior Administrative Law Judge for the State of California with jurisdiction over workplace disputes. In that role, he mediated more school district labor strikes than any other person in the United States. Ron Luyet is a licensed psychotherapist who has worked with group dynamics pioneers such as Carl Rogers and Will Schutz. He has advised Fortune 500 companies for over forty years specializing in building high-performance teams. Together they wrote Radical Collaboration and are excited to share this list with you today.
A very personal look at strategies, mindsets and tools to create collaborative leaders and more collaborative organizations. John Glaser balances both theory and practical advice gained from his extensive experience as both an outside consultant and an internal leader, as school superintendent of one of California’s most prominent and successful school districts, Napa Valley Unified School District. John Glaser knows what he’s writing about.
`Written by a very successful leader, problem solver and negotiator, the book combines a strong rationale for its practices, well delineated practical strategies, and vignettes from John Glaser's extensive background that provides the reader with a clear understanding of how to become a truly collaborative leader' - Pat Wolfe, Education Consultant Mind Matters, Inc
'What a marvelous blend of theory and practice! Glaser's writing is so engaging, so personal, and so informative that you will want to read every word. This book should be a requirement for every person who is serious about learning how to lead.' - Leonard O.…
