Here are 100 books that Faces of Internationalism fans have personally recommended if you like
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I started my career in Washington D.C., where my first job involved conducting strategy meetings with senior civilian and military policy officials regarding potential military conflicts around the world. At the time I was struck by the extent to which senior policymakers worried about whether they would be able to garner and sustain public support for U.S. overseas military operations. This concern often dominated our meetings. It ultimately set me on my course as a scholar, where much of my work has focused on trying to understand what average people think about the world, why they believe what they do, and whether and how their attitudes affect leaders’ decision-making in crisis situations.
Under what conditions will Americans support a president when he sends the nation to war? By looking at how the American public responded to the Korean and Vietnam wars in unprecedented breadth and depth, this is the question Mueller seeks to answer in arguably the most important book of the past half-century (or more) on American public opinion regarding war. This was one of the books that first got me interested in understanding why Americans respond the way they do to military conflicts, how presidential leadership, good and bad, can influence public support when American troops are in harm’s way.
Selected in 1995 as one of the "Fifty Books That Significantly Shaped Public Opinion Research, 1946-1995" by the American Association for Public Opinion Research. Recipient in 2007 of the first Warren J. Mitofsky Award for Excellence in Public Opinion Research, presented by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research In War, Presidents and Public Opinion, some of the most deeply-held assumptions about what the American people think of their involvement in the Vietnamese war turn out to be unsupportable. For example, it is possible that the anti-war protest during Vietnam increased the popularity of the war (chapter 6), and the…
I started my career in Washington D.C., where my first job involved conducting strategy meetings with senior civilian and military policy officials regarding potential military conflicts around the world. At the time I was struck by the extent to which senior policymakers worried about whether they would be able to garner and sustain public support for U.S. overseas military operations. This concern often dominated our meetings. It ultimately set me on my course as a scholar, where much of my work has focused on trying to understand what average people think about the world, why they believe what they do, and whether and how their attitudes affect leaders’ decision-making in crisis situations.
This is my go-to reference book about American public opinion on all things foreign policy. Holsti is one of the most important public opinion scholars of the 20th Century and arguably this is his most important book. I assign it in all of my undergraduate classes on the subject. He explains not only whatthe public believes about foreign policy—through case studies ranging from international trade to all major U.S. military conflicts in the post-World War II era—but also does a brilliant job of synthesizing decades of research on human information processing, learning, and ideological reasoning to explain in straightforward terms whypeople react to events the way they do. He also explains the (substantial) differences between the foreign policy views of elites and average citizens
One of the central issues in democratic theory is the proper role of public opinion in the conduct of international affairs. The capacity of the public to make informed judgments about these complex issues which are often far removed from their experience has been questioned. In addition, the impact of public opinion on foreign policy-making has been debated. In Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy Ole Holsti addresses these crucial issues using extensive data on public attitudes and preferences on international affairs. Holsti concludes that although the American public is not well informed about many aspects of foreign affairs, its…
I started my career in Washington D.C., where my first job involved conducting strategy meetings with senior civilian and military policy officials regarding potential military conflicts around the world. At the time I was struck by the extent to which senior policymakers worried about whether they would be able to garner and sustain public support for U.S. overseas military operations. This concern often dominated our meetings. It ultimately set me on my course as a scholar, where much of my work has focused on trying to understand what average people think about the world, why they believe what they do, and whether and how their attitudes affect leaders’ decision-making in crisis situations.
The mass media arguably play a critical intervening role between public opinion and foreign policy. Yet I’ve found that it is muchharder to explain how the media, or public opinion, exert such influence than it is to determine what the public thinks or why. This book offers one of the most compelling explanations I’ve found for when and how the media can influence foreign policy, by serving as the intermediary between voters and their leaders. Importantly, Entman shows how media framing of events can influence public support for presidential foreign policy initiatives. It offers a comprehensive and persuasive delineation of the interplay between the media, the public, and political leaders, which I teach every year to my students.
To succeed in foreign policy, U.S. presidents have to sell their versions or framings of political events to the news media and to the public. But since the end of the Cold War, journalists have increasingly resisted presidential views, even offering their own spin on events. What, then, determines whether the media will accept or reject the White House perspective? And what consequences does this new media environment have for policymaking and public opinion?
To answer these questions, Robert M. Entman develops a powerful new model of how media framing works-a model that allows him to explain why the media…
I started my career in Washington D.C., where my first job involved conducting strategy meetings with senior civilian and military policy officials regarding potential military conflicts around the world. At the time I was struck by the extent to which senior policymakers worried about whether they would be able to garner and sustain public support for U.S. overseas military operations. This concern often dominated our meetings. It ultimately set me on my course as a scholar, where much of my work has focused on trying to understand what average people think about the world, why they believe what they do, and whether and how their attitudes affect leaders’ decision-making in crisis situations.
This is one of the most comprehensive books on the question of how Americans think about war. Berinsky reviews public opinion on every major war since World War II. He persuasively refutes most existing explanations for public opinion regarding these conflicts, while showing that Americans’ responses to foreign policy events are not really unique to foreign policy. Rather, Americans mostly respond to wars the way they respond to most other political issues. One of the most impressive aspects of the book is the vast trove of previously unknown public opinion data from World War II that Berinsky uncovers. This is a unique window into one of America’s defining military conflicts. We learn that, contrary to the received wisdom, Americans responded to World War II in much the same way as they did during more recent conflicts.
From World War II to the war in Iraq, periods of international conflict seem like unique moments in U.S. political history - but when it comes to public opinion, they are not. To make this ground breaking revelation, In "Time of War" explodes conventional wisdom about American reactions to World War II, as well as the more recent conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Adam J. Berinsky argues that public response to these crises has been shaped less by their defining characteristics - such as what they cost in lives and resources - than by the…
I am a political scientist, a professor emeritus at Webster University, with scholarly publications about Latin American and U.S. politics. My interest in conspiracy theories was piqued by a reviewer who dismissed my book on the “democratic façade” of U.S. politics as a “conspiracy theory.” I took umbrage and denied being a “conspiracy theorist.” Years later, conversing with a colleague about Oliver Stone’s JFK, I dismissed his doubts about the lone gunman theory as a conspiracy theory. He asked whether I would similarly dismiss questions about official stories regarding assassinations in South Asia or Latin America. This all set me on the path to studying the role of conspiracies.
This classic revisionist history is often stigmatized as a “conspiracy theory.” The reason, I believe, is that it challenges the myth that American world hegemony over the past 75 years was thrust upon a country by post-World War II circumstances.
The authors show how a blueprint for military and economic dominance, a permanent war economy, and a national security state was laid out secretly by a committee of economic, intellectual, and government elites convened by the State Department and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in 1938.
This book is not one more jeremiad about the Illuminati or global elite cabal, but it does puncture the myth that American global power simply just happened in a post-war power vacuum.
News stories and academic studies often focus on the options chosen by a president and his officials during a crisis. Central to such decisions, however, are the forces that determine what options show up on the agenda and what options do not even make it to the table. Imperial Brain Trust, published in 1977, is the classic study of the Council on Foreign Relations, an organization that has, for decades, played a central behind the scenes role is shaping such foreign policy choices. This private club and think tank, bringing together the New York establishment and the Washington foreign policy…
I became an anthropologist by accident. I never liked school, but I loved to travel, and I got a PhD so that I could rail against development and the perils of cross-cultural misunderstanding in print. Naively, I thought maybe someone would listen. Luckily for me, I discovered I also liked teaching. I first taught at UCLA and then at the Naval Postgraduate School, where I had mostly mid-career U.S. and international special operations officers in class. More serendipity: my two decades at the Naval Postgraduate School bracketed the Global War on Terror, which unfortunately proved to be a witch’s brew of cross-cultural misunderstanding.
I’ve always paired this book with Promised Land, Crusader State, not only because Mead is such an elegant writer, but I don’t think anyone surpasses him at explaining how and why we lurch back and forth between foreign policies. Mead’s account made such an impression on me when I first read it that it’s left me in a quandary ever since.
If I could recommend only one of these two books to time-strapped officers, which would benefit them more? Here is where, like a good academic, I always punted and told everyone to read both.
"God has a special providence for fools, drunks and the United States of America."--Otto von Bismarck
America's response to the September 11 attacks spotlighted many of the country's longstanding goals on the world stage: to protect liberty at home, to secure America's economic interests, to spread democracy in totalitarian regimes and to vanquish the enemy utterly.
One of America's leading foreign policy thinkers, Walter Russell Mead, argues that these diverse, conflicting impulses have in fact been the key to the U.S.'s success in the world. In a sweeping new synthesis, Mead uncovers four distinct historical patterns in foreign policy, each…
Foreign policy has been my passion since I was a child. My father was a civil servant and growing up in India, I always wanted to follow in his footsteps but instead of working on domestic issues, I wanted to work on international affairs. History was another passion of mine and I wanted to combine the two of them in such a way that I studied the past in order to explain the present and help the future. This passion led me to enroll in a PhD program in the United States and then work at a think tank. I have written three books, two of which focus exclusively on foreign policy. I hope you enjoy reading the books I have listed and read my book.
This classic, written by the authors of the 11-volume The Story of Civilization, is a must-read for those who want to understand everything, from history to economics, from foreign policy to politics. I have read and re-read this book multiple times as it is my go-to book for when I rethink issues and problems. This short collection of essays offers simple yet critical lessons on geography, biology, economics, religion, and government all of which help explain the foreign policies of empires and states.
In this illuminating and thoughtful book, Will and Ariel Durant have succeeded in distilling for the reader the accumulated store of knowledge and experience from their five decades of work on the eleven monumental volumes of The Story of Civilization. The result is a survey of human history, full of dazzling insights into the nature of human experience, the evolution of civilization, and the culture of man. With the completion of their life's work, they look back and ask what history has to say about the nature, the conduct and the prospects of man, seeking in the great lives, the…
Foreign policy has been my passion since I was a child. My father was a civil servant and growing up in India, I always wanted to follow in his footsteps but instead of working on domestic issues, I wanted to work on international affairs. History was another passion of mine and I wanted to combine the two of them in such a way that I studied the past in order to explain the present and help the future. This passion led me to enroll in a PhD program in the United States and then work at a think tank. I have written three books, two of which focus exclusively on foreign policy. I hope you enjoy reading the books I have listed and read my book.
This is a book by a former top diplomat of India that lays out in a clear and concise fashion India’s priorities, its interests, and its concerns. Real life examples are cited to explain the choices India made, or didn’t make, and the reasons behind those decisions. As someone who is passionate about foreign policy, and who loves archival research, I loved reading a book written by a practitioner in which he tells you about the challenges they face and the real-life choices they have to make.
A look behind the scenes of some of India's most critical foreign policy decisions by the country's former foreign secretary and national security adviser.
Every country must make choices about foreign policy and national security. Sometimes those choices turn out to have been the correct ones, other times not. In this insider's account, Shivshankar Menon describes some of the most crucial decisions India has faced during his long career in government - and how key personalities often had to make choices based on incomplete information under the pressure of fast-moving events.
Menon either participated directly, or was associated with, all…
The Second World War featured prominently in comics and conversations with adults when I was a boy. Knowing about the war and its origins was a way to make sense of the world. As an undergraduate, my history professor insisted I also study economics. That has helped my study of strategy, which is also concerned with choices between alternative uses of scarce resources. However, dry analysis is not enough for a historian. It mattered that Churchill and Chamberlain had different personalities. I try to recapture the political passions of the past and the uncertainty people felt then about the future.
Norman Gibbs supervised my doctoral thesis at Oxford and kindly lent me the proofs of his book before its publication in the series of official histories of the Second World War. I have often had to consult it since and have never failed to find something relevant to what I want to know about British defense policy, often in the form of a quotation from a key document.
Pages 892. Reprinted in 2016 with the help of original edition published long back. This book is in black & white, Hardcover, sewing binding for longer life with Matt laminated multi-Colour Dust Cover, Printed on high quality Paper, re-sized as per Current standards, professionally processed without changing its contents. As these are old books, there may be some pages which are blur or missing or black spots. If it is multi volume set, then it is only single volume. We expect that you will understand our compulsion in these books. We found this book important for the readers who want…
I became an anthropologist by accident. I never liked school, but I loved to travel, and I got a PhD so that I could rail against development and the perils of cross-cultural misunderstanding in print. Naively, I thought maybe someone would listen. Luckily for me, I discovered I also liked teaching. I first taught at UCLA and then at the Naval Postgraduate School, where I had mostly mid-career U.S. and international special operations officers in class. More serendipity: my two decades at the Naval Postgraduate School bracketed the Global War on Terror, which unfortunately proved to be a witch’s brew of cross-cultural misunderstanding.
This one sticks the most of all the books I’ve read on U.S./Afghan relations. Whenever I visited former students serving in Afghanistan, I used to joke that I was there to listen to them vent and vent they did. Even those who most wanted to do right by Afghans felt perpetually thwarted by their higher-ups.
One reason I couldn’t get enough of Partlow’s account is that no matter how frustrated American and Coalition servicemembers were, they had nothing on Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s leader. Senior leaders on our side routinely pressured Karzai, persistently trying to get him to do very un-Afghan things. Yet, as Partlow reveals, in large part thanks to Washington’s enabling ignorance, Karzai often resisted quite successfully.
The key to understanding the calamitous Afghan war is the complex, ultimately failed relationship between the powerful, duplicitous Karzai family and the United States, brilliantly portrayed here by the formerKabul bureau chief for The Washington Post.
The United States went to Afghanistan on a simple mission: avenge the September 11 attacks and drive the Taliban from power. This took less than two months. Over the course of the next decade, the ensuing fight for power and money—supplied to one of the poorest nations on earth, in ever-greater amounts—left the region even more dangerous than before the first troops arrived.
