New Books In World Affairs

Anti-semitism is on the rise in the U.S. and other parts of the world. 6 people died this week in Jersey City, New Jersey, in a shootout at a kosher supermarket. The two gunmen appear to have been motivated by anti-semitism and anger against the police. Britain's Labour Party has been rocked by widespread reports of anti-semitism. Labor's second most powerful leader has apologized to the Jewish community and admits the controversy may affect the result of this week's U.K. election. Our guest in this episode of "How Do We Fix It?" is Bari Weiss, an opinion writer at The New York Times, who covers culture and politics. We discuss her new book, How to Fight Anti-Semitism (Crown, 2019). "When anti-semitism is rising it is the number one sign that a society is dying or maybe is already dead," Bari tells us. "The proximate victims are Jews themselves, but the bigger and overlooked victim, if you look at history, is the surrounding society." Bari mentions this article by the anti-racist scholar and activist Eric War

Sir Walter Ralegh was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth. She showered him with estates and political appointments. He envisioned her becoming empress of a universal empire. She gave him the opportunity to lead the way. In Walter Ralegh: Architect of Empire (Basic Books, 2019), Alan Gallay shows that, while Ralegh may be best known for founding the failed Roanoke colony, his historical importance vastly exceeds that enterprise. Inspired by the mystical religious philosophy of hermeticism, Ralegh led English attempts to colonize in North America, South America, and Ireland. He believed that the answer to English fears of national decline resided overseas — and that colonialism could be achieved without conquest. Gallay reveals how Ralegh launched the English Empire and an era of colonization that shaped Western history for centuries after his death. Ryan Tripp is part-time and full-time adjunct history faculty at California community colleges as well as the College of Online and Continuing Education at Southern New

If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. However, if you’ve spent the last several years working on a PhD, or if you’re a faculty member whose career has basically consisted of higher ed, switching isn’t so easy. PhD holders are mostly trained to work as professors, and making easy connections to other careers is no mean feat. Because the people you know were generally trained to do the same sorts of things, an easy source of advice might not be there for you. Thankfully, for anybody who wishes there was a guidebook that would just break all of this down, that book has now been written. Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers (Stylus Publishing, 2020) by Kathryn E. Linder, Kevin Kelly, and Thomas J. Tobin offers practical advice and step-by-step instructions on how to decide if you want to leave behind academia and how to start searching for a new career. If a lot of career advice is too vague

Today we talk to Jeremy Black, professor of history at Exeter University, UK, about two of his most recent book projects, both of which relate to the ways in which we think about empires, and the British empire in particular. Geographies of an Imperial Power: The British World, 1688-1815 (Indiana University Press, 2018) and Imperial legacies: The British Empire Around the World (Encounter, 2019) address some very timely themes. A great deal of recent discussion among humanities scholars has focused on the possibility or even necessity of “de-colonising the curriculum.” But what does this project mean? Why do empires matter? Are imperial histories and legacies better understood from a geographical or historical viewpoint? And are empires inevitable? Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. His research interests focus on the history of puritanism and evangelicalism, and he is the author most recently of John Owen and English Puritanism (Oxford University Press, 2016). Learn mor

The neoliberal consensus, once thought to be undefeatable, seems to have been broken both in the wake of the fiscal crisis of 2008, as well as a series of surprise movements and elections throughout the world in the last several years. But many scholars argue that it remains alive and well, just in a changed, mutated form. This is the theme that motivates the recent anthology Mutant Neoliberalism: Market Rule and Political Rupture (Fordham University Press, 2020). The book features ten essay by a cast of writers covering the ways in which neoliberalism is mutating to stay alive in a changing environment. William Callison is a visiting assistant professor of Government and Law at Lafayette College. Zachary Manfredi is an Equal Justice Works Fellow at the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project. Stephen Dozeman is a freelance writer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Governing the world—A critical look at the current state of global governance. We live in a time of profound global crises. So, who exactly is responsible for identifying global solutions? Since there is no common world government, global issues are usually addressed by certain international institutions or organizations that develop laws, frameworks, and policies—a phenomenon called “global governance.” However, does this type of regulation actually work? Prof Stephen Gill, FRSC, Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at York University, Toronto, discusses the current state of global governance and its role in resolving global issues, as documented in a new study in the journal Global Governance, published by Brill. Listen to this podcast now! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

A trade war with China has dangerous implications for the global economy. What began more than a year ago with President Trump’s decision to impose tariffs has become an unpleasant economic reality for many businesses. Recently, the U.S. labeled China a “currency manipulator.” But an even larger long-term threat comes from China’s aggressive espionage offensive that is playing out in behind-the-scenes as of the U.S. and China struggle for global dominance. Our guest is Elizabeth Economy, a senior fellow and director of Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Her most recent book, The Third Revolution: Xi Jinpeng and the New Chinese State (Oxford University Press, 2018), explains the background to recent dramatic changes inside China. She is among a distinguished group of China specialists who once favored engagement with Beijing, but are now calling for the United States to take a more forceful approach as China attempts to undermine democratic values. We discuss the best ways to navigat

Climate change impacts-more heat, drought, extreme rainfall, and stronger storms-have already harmed communities around the globe. Even if the world could cut its carbon emissions to zero tomorrow, further significant global climate change is now inevitable. Although we cannot tell with certainty how much average global temperatures will rise, we do know that the warming we have experienced to date has caused significant losses, and that the failure to prepare for the consequences of further warming may prove to be staggering. Building a Resilient Tomorrow: How to Prepare for the Coming Climate Disruption (Oxford University Press, 2019), edited by Alice C. Hill and Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, does not dwell on overhyped descriptions of apocalyptic climate scenarios, nor does it travel down well-trodden paths surrounding the politics of reducing carbon emissions. Instead, it starts with two central facts: climate impacts will continue to occur, and we can make changes now to mitigate their effects. While squarely

Every generation returns to the titanic heroes and villains of the 20th century. And every generation produces a new set of biographies--often immense--in an effort to understand the role of that eras main figures. In the past three years, three important new books have reassessed Hitler's life, beliefs and actions. Two of the authors, Volker Ulrich and Peter Longerich, are historians of Germany who are German. The third, our guest for today's interview, is British. In his new book Hitler: A Global Biography (Basic Books, 2019), Brendan Simms  offers us a different Hitler, one much more focused on global capitalism and on the Anglo-American world than either Ulrich of Longerich.  Simms argues that fears that Germany would lose the economic and demographic competition with Britain and especially the US sat at the heart of Hitler's world view. Anti-Semitism, fears of German particularism, scientific understandings of race, all of these appear in Simms' portrait of Hitler. But they are joined by a constant fear

Award winning activist and researcher Raj Patel has teamed up with innovative environmental historian and historical geographer Jason W. Moore to produce an accessible book which provides historical explanations for the world ecological crises and the global crisis in capitalism. Using the framework of "cheapness," A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet (University of California Press, 2017) takes the reader through the long history of the search for lower production costs, extending from European colonial conquests in the fifteenth century up to present agroindustrial systems. This quest for cheapness originated with European colonists' desire to separate Society—themselves—from Nature—everything else. All forms of "Nature" were categorized by colonist and capitalists so that they could be efficiently used for production. Human beings were often included in this contrived category of Nature. Colonized people, the indigenous, women, and brown

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump broke not only from the Republican Party consensus but also from the bipartisan consensus on the direction of recent U.S. foreign policy. Calling the Iraq war a terrible mistake and lamenting America's nation building efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Trump has shown little interest in maintaining the traditional form of American leadership of the liberal international order. He has threatened to pull the United States out of NATO, complained that the United States was being taken advantage of by its trading partners, and argued that uncontrolled third-world immigration was a terrible mistake and indeed a threat to the American heartland. Instead, Trump's “America First” vision called for a reassertion of American nationalism on the economic front as well as in foreign affairs. In short, President Trump’s foreign policy is more akin to that of the pre-Franklin Delano Roosevelt America. Fuel to the Fire: How Trump made America’s Foreign Policy Even Worse (and

The Versailles Treaty of 1919, celebrates its one-hundred anniversary this year. And, yet unlike the more recent centenaries, such as that of the outbreak of the Great War or the Russian Revolution, the Versailles Treaty, notwithstanding its importance as perhaps the most important of the twentieth-century, has not seen the same level of interest? Is this relatively indifference due to the fact that it is still regarded by some (in the words of John Maynard Keynes) as a 'Carthaginian Peace', which lead inevitably to the rise of Hitler and the outbreak of the Second World War? To discuss this and other aspects of the Treaty, in the podcast channel, 'Arguing History', are Professor of History at the University of Exeter, Jeremy Black and Dr. Charles Coutinho, of the Royal Historical Society. Professor Jeremy Black MBE, Is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. A graduate of Queens College, Cambridge, he is the author of well over one-hundred books. In 2008 he was awarded the “Samuel Eliot Morison Awa

By choice or not, the catastrophes of global warming and mass extinction task young generations with reorienting human relationships with the earth’s systems, resources, and lifeforms. The extractavist mindset that promised prosperity in the 20th century now spells doom in the 21st and leaves us unprepared to live on a damaged planet. Into this space academics have birthed a dizzying number of tongue-twisting neologisms, but editors Matthew Schneider-Mayerson and Brent Ryan Bellamy provide us with the welcome reminder that human societies are already rich in intellectual resources for such transformation. Accordingly, An Ecotopian Lexicon (University of Minnesota Press, 2019) explores dozens of possible loanwords from world cultures, activists subcultures, and speculative fiction that can inform novel quotidian practices, cosmological insights, and political orientations applicable to the age of the Anthropocene. With short readable and eloquent essays that elaborate each term and its possible uses without he

In Benjamin Breen's The Age of Intoxication: Origins of the Global Drug Trade (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), we are transported back to a time when there was no such thing as "recreational" and "medicinal" drugs. People ate Egyptian mummies. Tobacco apparently cured cancer. And the book has many more fascinating stories. Focusing in on the Portuguese colonies in Brazil and Angola and on the imperial capital of Lisbon, Breen deftly explores the process by which novel drugs were located, commodified, and consumed. And Breen demonstrates that drugs have been entwined with science and empire from the very beginning. Just like today. Benjamin Breen is an Assistant Professor in the History Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Lucas Richert is an associate professor in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He studies intoxicating substances and the pharmaceutical industry. He also examines the history of mental health.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit m

In his notes for a speech to be delivered in the House of Commons in the wake of American Independence, the MP and imperial reformer Edmund Burke observed that ‘Some people are great Lovers of uniformity - They are not satisfied with a rebellion in the West. They must have one in the East: They are not satisfied with losing one Empire - they must lose another. Lord North will weep that he has not more worlds to lose’. At its eighteenth-century height, the British Empire extended its power over two vast indigenous spaces: one in North America, and the other in India. The question of what this empire was, and how it should be governed was the subject of intense debate in Britain. For decades, historians have maintained that the acquisition of vast territorial domains was unexpected and unplanned – in a ‘fit of absence of mind’. In The Politics of Empire at the Accession of George III: The East India Company and the Crisis and Transformation of Britain’s Imperial State (Yale University Press, 2019), James M. Vau

Every time that I teach any portion of a course dealing with Ronald Reagan and the end of the Cold War, I gird myself for the inevitable myth-busting that I’m going to do. The idea that Reagan won the Cold War by bankrupting the Soviet Union through heavy military expenditures has become a piece of commonly accepted wisdom about the 40th president. In the eyes of Reagan’s defenders, the military buildup the president began in the early 1980s forced the Soviets to either accept a reformer, Mikhail Gorbachev, or in trying to keep up with the weight of the military buildup ruined their own economy in the process. Consequently, toughness and a commitment to a strong military were the triumphalist lessons of the Cold War. Beth Fischer’s The Myth of Triumphalism: Rethinking President Reagan's Cold War Legacy (University Press of Kentucky, 2019) challenges this interpretation of Reagan’s Cold War foreign policy. Fischer argues that the military buildup was actually deeply counterproductive, frightening the Soviet le

Growing up as an American, you’re bound to be all-but-suffused with triumphalist histories of the American Revolution. Those histories might have a tough of the Hegelian to them, asserting that the Revolutionary War was part of the inevitable development of freedom worldwide. More academic histories have focused more critically on the war itself and what it meant for American society, such as the fact that a war allegedly fought for freedom also involved the ongoing oppression of slaves. The war’s global dimensions have similarly been discussed, dating back at this point to Samuel Flagg Bemis’ The Diplomacy of the American Revolution. Matthew Lockwood’s To Begin The World Over Again: How the American Revolution Devastated the Globe (Yale University Press, 2019) pushes this analysis farther, looking at the global consequences of the American Revolution. Lockwood shows that the war, whatever its debatable effects for the residents of the thirteen colonies, unleashed a whole host of catastrophes for people elsew

Anti-Semitic incidents, ranging from vandalism through murder, are on the rise in Great Britain, and across Europe and North America. Julia Neuberger - Senior Rabbi at West London Synagogue, a member of the House of Lords, chair of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, and trustee of Full Fact, an organization dedicated to getting proper information and fair evidence before the public – writes for the contemporary reader who wants clarification of the way this insidious prejudice has reappeared in many parts of today’s society. She explains that anti-Semitism is not only a threat to Jews, but also to other minorities and to the society as whole, as it promotes paranoid conspiracy theories and irrationality. Beginning with a history of anti-Semitism, from ancient times, through early Christianity, through the Middle Ages and on to Nazi ideology, Antisemitism: What It Is, What It Isn’t, Why It Matters (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2019) also explores the boundary between legitimate criticism of Israeli policies and ant

Never have so many possessed the means to be so lethal. The diffusion of modern technology (robotics, cyber weapons, 3-D printing, autonomous systems, and artificial intelligence) to ordinary people has given them access to weapons of mass violence previously monopolized by the state. In recent years, states have attempted to stem the flow of such weapons to individuals and non-state groups, but their efforts are failing. In Power to the People: How Open Technological Innovation is Arming Tomorrow’s Terrorists (Oxford University Press, 2019), Audrey Kurth Cronin... Explains a fundamental shift in patterns of innovation for lethal technologies, and what it means; Looks at individuals and private groups, not states, as the most significant trend redefining the future; Presents contemporary case studies and discussion of paradigm-shifting technology from the late 19th century and mid-20th century; Combines history, science and technology, political science, security and terrorism studies, with a deep underst

Increasing levels of globalization have led to the proliferation of spaces of international exchange. In her new book, Global Borderlands: Fantasy, Violence, and Empire in Subic Bay, Philippines (Stanford, 2019), sociologist Victoria Reyes looks at one such space, the Subic Bay Freeport Zone, in the Philippines, to understand how they are contested and imagined by different sets of actors in everyday life. She sees freeport zones, places intended to attract foreign investment through the relaxing of domestic economic laws, as examples of what she calls “global borderlands,” or “a place controlled by foreigners and one where the rules that govern socioeconomic life differ from those outside its walls” (2) (other examples include Acapulco, NYU’s Abu Dhabi campus, and any embassy or consulate around the world). They are where two or more legal systems coexist, and where the very notion of state sovereignty gets negotiated on the ground. Through ethnographic and historical-comparative analysis, Reyes shows the or