Author: John Lewis Gaddis File Type: epub Drawing on extensive interviews with George Kennan and exclusive access to his archives, an eminent scholar of the Cold War delivers a revelatory biography of its troubled mastermind. In the late 1940s, George Kennan wrote two documents, the Long Telegram and the X Article, which set forward the strategy of containment that would define U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union for the next four decades. This achievement alone would qualify him as the most influential American diplomat of the Cold War era. But he was also an architect of the Marshall Plan, a prizewinning historian, and would become one of the most outspoken critics of American diplomacy, politics, and culture during the last half of the twentieth century. Now the full scope of Kennans long life and vast influence is revealed by one of todays most important Cold War scholars. Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis began this magisterial history almost thirty years ago, interviewing Kennan frequently and gaining complete access to his voluminous diaries and other personal papers. So frank and detailed were these materials that Kennan and Gaddis agreed that the book would not appear until after Kennans death. It was well worth the wait the journals give this book a breathtaking candor and intimacy that match its century-long sweep. We see Kennans insecurity as a Midwesterner among elites at Princeton, his budding dissatisfaction with authority and the status quo, his struggles with depression, his gift for satire, and his sharp insights on the policies and people he encountered. Kennan turned these sharp analytical gifts upon himself, even to the point of regularly recording dreams. The result is a remarkably revealing view of how this greatest of Cold War strategists came to doubt his strategy and always doubted himself. This is a landmark work of history and biography that reveals the vast influence and rich inner landscape of a life that both mirrored and shaped the century it spanned.

Author: Jonathan Renshon File Type: pdf There is widespread agreement that status or standing in the international system is a critical element in world politics. The desire for status is recognized as a key factor in nuclear proliferation, the rise of China, and other contemporary foreign policy issues, and has long been implicated in foundational theories of international relations and foreign policy. Despite the consensus that status matters, we lack a basic understanding of status dynamics in international politics. The first book to comprehensively examine this subject, Fighting for Status presents a theory of status dissatisfaction that delves into the nature of prestige in international conflicts and specifies why states want status and how they get it. What actions do status concerns trigger, and what strategies do states use to maximize or salvage their standing? When does status matter, and under what circumstances do concerns over relative position overshadow the myriad other concerns that leaders face? In examining these questions, Jonathan Renshon moves beyond a focus on major powers and shows how different states construct status communities of peer competitors that shift over time as states move up or down, or out, of various groups. Combining innovative network-based statistical analysis, historical case studies, and a lab experiment that uses a sample of real-world political and military leaders, Fighting for Status provides a compelling look at the causes and consequences of status on the global stage. **From the Back Cover People think that countries go to war over resources, but all too often nations are, as Shakespeare put it, jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannons mouth. With insight and data, Renshon explains how nebulous concerns with status, prestige, and respect can drive the course of war and peace.--Steven Pinker, author of *The Better Angels of Our Nature* Renshon provides powerful proof of what scholars and practitioners have long believed but could never demonstrate concretely that the people who govern states sometimes want status enough to fight for it. A major advance in the study of the causes of war, Fighting for Status is a theoretically rich and methodologically sophisticated tour de force that takes our understanding of the international political implications of a core human trait to a new level.--William C. Wohlforth, coauthor of *America Abroad* Fighting for Status is a theoretically innovative and methodologically rigorous study, with a sophisticated multimethod design that will reshape the analysis of status in international politics. The role of status is an enormously important but difficult question in many fields, and Renshon makes a pathbreaking contribution that will now be required reading.--Jack S. Levy, Rutgers University This book argues that status has been a concept often used to explain foreign policy choices and international conflict but it is not well defined or carefully studied. Fighting for Status is the best comprehensive treatment I have seen that advances a theory of when and how status matters.--Richard K. Herrmann, Ohio State University About the Author Jonathan Renshon is an assistant professor and Trice Faculty Scholar in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Author: David Wallace-Wells File Type: epub **NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The Uninhabitable Earthhits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon.Andrew Solomon, author ofThe Noonday Demon** It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible. In California, wildfires now rage year-round, destroying thousands of homes. Across the US, 500-year storms pummel communities month after month, and floods displace tens of millions annually. This is only a preview of the changes to come. And they are coming fast. Without a revolution in how billions of humans conduct their lives, parts of the Earth could become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century. In his travelogue of our near future, David Wallace-Wells brings into stark relief the climate troubles that awaitfood shortages, refugee emergencies, and other crises that will reshape the globe. But the world will be remade by warming in more profound ways as well, transforming our politics, our culture, our relationship to technology, and our sense of history. It will be all-encompassing, shaping and distorting nearly every aspect of human life as it is lived today. LikeAn Inconvenient TruthandSilent Springbefore it, The Uninhabitable Earth is both a meditation on the devastation we have brought upon ourselves and an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation. **Review ANew York TimesEditors Choice The Uninhabitable Earthis the most terrifying book I have ever read. Its subject is climate change, and its method is scientific, but its mode is Old Testament. The book is a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet. *Farhad Manjoo,The New York Times *Riveting. . . .Some readers will find Mr. Wallace-Wellss outline of possible futures alarmist. He is indeed alarmed. You should be, too.*The Economist** Potent and evocative. . . . Wallace-Wells has resolved to offer something other than the standard narrative of climate change. . . . He avoids the eerily banal language of climatology in favor of lush, rolling prose. Jennifer Szalai, *The New York Times Most of us know the gist, if not the details, of the climate change crisis. And yet it is almost impossible to sustain strong feelings about it. David Wallace-Wells has now provided the details, and with writing that is not only clear and forceful, but often imaginative and even funny, he has found a way to make the information deeply felt.*Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything is Illuminated* David Wallace-Wells argues that the impacts of climate change will be much graver than most people realize, and hes right.The Uninhabitable Earthis a timely and provocative work.Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction An excellent book. . . . Not since Bill McKibbens The End of Nature* thirty years ago have we been told what climate change will mean in such vivid terms. Fred Pearce, The Washington Post*** One of the very few books about our climate change emergency that doesnt sugarcoat the horror.William T. Vollmann*, author of No Immediate Danger hr Powerfully argued. . . . A masterly analysis of whywith a world of solutionswe choose doom. Nature This gripping, terrifying, furiously readable book is possibly the most wide-ranging account yet written of the ways in which climate change will transform every aspect of our lives, ranging from where we live to what we eat and the stories we tell. Essential reading for our ever-more-unfamiliar and unpredictable world.Amitav Ghosh, author of Flood of Fire** Urgent and humane. . . . Wallace-Wells is an extremely adept storyteller. . . . A horrifying assessment of what we might expect as a result of climate change if we dont change course. Susan Matthews, Slate** If we dont want our grandchildren to curse us, we had better read this book.Timothy Snyder, author of Black Earth** Lively. . . . Vivid. . . . If youve snoozed through or turned away from the climate change news, this book will waken and update you. If youre steeped in the unfolding climate drama, Wallace-Wellss voice and perspective will be stimulating. David George Haskell, The Guardian** Beautifully written. . . . As climate change encroaches, things will get worse. Much worse. And David Wallace-Wells spares no detail in explaining how.Kate Aronoff,*Bookforum* Relentless, angry journalism of the highest order. Read it and, for the lack of any more useful response, weep. Bryan Appleyard,*The Sunday Times* A brilliant and unsparing analysis of a nightmare that is no longer a distant future but our chaotic, burning present. Unlike other writers who speak about human agency in the abstract, Wallace-Wells zeros in on the power structures and capitalist elites whose mindless greed is writing an obituary for our grandchildren.Mike Davis, author of Ecology of Fear * A lucid and thorough description of our unprecedented crisis, and of the mechanisms of denial with which we seek to avoid its fullest recognition.William Gibson, author of *Neuromancer* David Wallace-Wells has produced a willfully terrifying polemic that reads like a cross between Stephen King and Stephen Hawking.Written with verve and insight and an eerie gusto for its own horrors, it comes just when we need it it could not be more urgent than it is at this moment. I hope everyone will read it and be afraid.*Andrew Solomon*,author of*The Noonday Demon** About the Author David Wallace-Wellsis a national fellow at the New America foundation and a columnist and deputy editor at New York magazine. He was previously the deputy editor of The Paris Review. He lives in New York City.

Author: Martin P. Bunton File Type: pdf In this book, Martin Bunton focuses on the way in which the Palestine Mandate was part of a broader British imperial administration - a fact often masked by Jewish immigration and land purchase in Palestine. His meticulous research reveals clear links to colonial practice in India, Sudan, and Cyprus amongst other places. He argues that land officials views on sound land management were derived from their own experiences of rural England, and that this was far more influential onthe shaping of land policies than the promise of a Jewish National Home.Bunton reveals how the British were intent on preserving the status quo of Ottoman land law, which (when few Britons could read Ottoman or were well grounded in its legal codes) led to a series of translations, interpretations, and hence new applications of land law. The sense of importance the British attributed to their work surveying and registering properties and transactions, is captured in the efforts of British officials to microfilm all of their records at the height of the Second WorldWar. Despite this however, land policies remained in flux.