All leaders are constrained by geography. Their choices are limited by mountains, rivers, seas and concrete. Yes, to understand world events you need to understand people, ideas and movements - but if you don't know geography, you'll never have the full picture. To understand Putin's actions, for example, it is essential to consider that, to be a world power, Russia must have a navy. And if its ports freeze for six months each year then it must have...

"The Last Empire is Gore Vidal's ninth collection of essays. As in the previous volumes, Vidal displays unparalleled range and inimitable style as he deals with matters literary, historical, personal, and political."--Jacket.

Traditionally, Americans have viewed war as an alternative to diplomacy, and military strategy as the science of victory. Today, however, in our world of nuclear weapons, military power is not so much exercised as threatened. It is, Mr. Schelling says, bargaining power, and the exploitation of this power, for good or evil, to preserve peace or to threaten war, is diplomacy - the diplomacy of violence. The author concentrates in this book on the way...

The CNN host and best-selling author explores the revolutions--past and present--that define the polarized and unstable age in which we live.

"A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and journalist explains, with electrifying clarity, why some of her contemporaries have abandoned liberal democratic ideals in favor of strongman cults, nationalist movements, or one-party states. Across the world today, from the U.S. to Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege while different forms of authoritarianism are on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum argues...

A history of Western civilization's rise to global dominance offers insight into the development of such concepts as competition, modern medicine, and the work ethic, arguing that Western dominance is being lost to cultures who are more productively utilizing Western techniques. "The rise to global predominance of Western civilization is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five hundred years. All over the world, an astonishing...

What we remember, what we've forgotten, and what we never knew about America's least understood war, revealed in a riveting, richly illustrated volume based on the major ten-part PBS documentary series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Historian Geoffrey C. Ward and filmmaker Ken Burns, the authors of the acclaimed and best-selling The Civil War, Jazz, The War, and Baseball, present an intimate history of the Vietnam War. All the major milestones...

This sequel to The Prize provides a narrative of global energy, the principal engine of geopolitical and economic change. Energy authority Yergin tells the inside stories of the oil market, the rise of the "petrostate," the race to control the resources of the former Soviet empire, and the massive corporate mergers that transformed the oil landscape. He shows how the drama of oil will continue to shape our world, and takes on the tough questions:...

American corporations have to beg for capital from the cash-rich Sovereign Wealth Funds in the Persian Gulf. By invading Iraq, President George W. Bush grossly undermined American credibility in the international arena and irrevocably weakened Washington's diplomatic clout. Together, these historic shifts have provided an opportunity for the world to move from the tutelage of the sole superpower, America, to a multi-polar global order, one where America's...

"Joe Mulhall knows what it's like to stare fascism in the face. For a decade, often undercover at significant personal risk, he has investigated hate groups. He infiltrated a US white supremacist militia, set up a fake Ku Klux Klan branch, has been on countless street marches with violent far-right groups across Europe, and got inside some of the most important 'alt-right' meetings ever held. Brazil, India and the US are still in thrall to authoritarian...