Our next Bridging the Gap Book Nook features Tom Long of the University of Warwick. He discusses his new Oxford University Press book, A Small State's Guide to Influence in World Politics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glKAammexM8
Our next Bridging the Gap Book Nook features Tom Long of the University of Warwick. He discusses his new Oxford University Press book, A Small State's Guide to Influence in World Politics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glKAammexM8
I read a lot of crap this year, but the good stuff was really good. The Causes of World War Three, by C. Wright Mills This book is from 1961, just after Mills's famous "Letter to the New Left" and...
There is all kinds of advice out there on how to write and finish a book. We are frequently advised to 'Write everyday', 'write early in the morning,' 'workshop and present your work,' among other...
It’s not often that a Marine officer writes a book that goes head-to-head with a title currently listed as “Commandant’s Choice” book by the Marine Corps, but in this case, I had little choice but...
It is time for an academic Thanksgiving (at least it is for me, flew home early because it was Reading Week in the UK), that time of year when we give thanks for when our ancestral academic Deans fed us when we were hungry. Something like that...cornucopia with grants, laptops, and travel funds. Who knows how it all started. Still, it is that time of year we all reflect on what we are thankful for. So what am I thankful for, as an academic? For one, I am thankful for Laura Sjoberg's contributions to the Duck of Minerva. She has not been posting regularly for some time but her...
Dan Drezner has issued a call to arms!... or to your library card:"I therefore call upon the readers of this blog to proffer up their suggestions -- if you had to pick three books for an ambitious U.S. politician to read in order to bone up on foreign affairs, what would they be?"I have a gut feeling that all of the answers are going to be grand strategy, grand strategy and some war on terror/Afghanistan. (Although, maybe I’m not being generous enough... but looking at the comments on Drezner's post, I don't think so.) So I’m going to suggest three books that touch on issues presented by...
Henry Farrell mentions Francis Spufford's new book Red Plenty. Before proceeding, you should know three things:I have no connection, social or otherwise, with Francis Spufford.I am a philistine made almost incapable of reading literary fiction by years of journal articles and serious journalism.I am in no way an expert in any aspect of Soviet culture, politics, or history.Bearing these facts in mind, let me give the book my highest recommendation. A colleague brought back a copy from the UK at my request, so I've read the book well in advance of its American release (which has still not...
When I was a college student, I spent every Labor Day working in the debate squadroom at Kansas. Everyone on the team, in fact, was expected to put in a full day working on their affirmative cases, negative arguments, etc. Sometimes, debaters learned the identity of their colleague on that day -- it is a two-person team activity after all. After the work ended, our coach and his wife hosted the team for dinner.Even though it was a Labor Day of work and not rest, I always enjoyed it and have fond memories. Recently, former National Debate Tournament champion Michael Horowitz (Emory 2000)...
I'll be mostly off the grid traveling for the next two and half weeks, and I want to thank readers for their many suggestions as to what I should take with me. I probably won't flesh out my entire reading list until I get to the airport Barnes and Noble, but I have decided on one book I'm definitely taking with - and it's not even a paperback: Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do by Albert Laszlo Barabasi.Barabasi first captured my imagination with his book Linked, a lay person's guide to network science, and his new book is said to extend his analytical vision through time as...
At the invitation of an old friend, my daughter and I will be traveling to Thailand the first two weeks of July, and I've been commanded to bring only vacation reading. It's been awhile since I did any of that and I could use suggestions for humorous, smart, non-war-crimes related non-fiction or other good beach reads.In the past I've enjoyed humorous science writing like Mary Roach's Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers; funny, twisted memoirs like Augusten Buroughs' Running With Scissors or Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle or social-science-for-laypersons books like More Sex is...
During my self-inflicted hiatus, I've been traveling a lot by road with two children, so I've had less reading time. But I've also been staying in a lot of people's houses along the way, and that has allowed me to accumulate vast (and vastly more diverse than usual) amount of reading material.We turned around and headed east yesterday, and I should be back to blogging regularly in a couple of weeks. Until then, I thought I'd post tell of a few literary nuggets worth the late-summer beach-goer's attention, especially if you're looking to get out of your foreign policy head-space. Each one has...
The Barnes and Noble website is currently advertising a new and potentially interesting book slated to be issued later this summer: Historical Dictionary of Terrorism by Sean K. Anderson. Unfortunately, the book pictured is not the one advertised -- the second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Islam by Ludwig W. Adamec: ISLAM is clearly readable in all caps and quite large font.Anyone can make a mistake, but this one is particularly clumsy. Here's a screen capture: Hat tip: freelance journalist David Zax. Check out his pieces in The Smithsonian.