*Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography* *Winner of the Los Angeles Times Prize for Biography* *Winner of the 2019 Hitchens Prize* Portrays Holbrooke in all of his endearing and exasperating self-willed glory...Both a sweeping diplomatic history and a Shakespearean tragicomedy... If you could read one book to comprehend American's foreign policy and its quixotic forays into quicksands over the past 50 years, this would be it.--Walter Isaacson, The New York Times Book Review By the end of the second page, maybe the third, you will be hooked...There never was a diplomat-activist quite like [Holbrooke], and there seldom has been a book quite like this -- sweeping and sentimental, beguiling and brutal, catty and critical, much like the man himself.--David M. Shribman, The Boston Globe Richard Holbrooke was brilliant, utterly self-absorbed, and possessed of almost inhuman energy and appetites. Admired and detested, he was the force behind the Dayton Accords that ended the Balkan wars, America's greatest diplomatic achievement in the post-Cold War era. His power lay in an utter belief in himself and his idea of a muscular, generous foreign policy. From his days as a young adviser in Vietnam to his last efforts to end the war in Afghanistan, Holbrooke embodied the postwar American impulse to take the lead on the global stage. But his sharp elbows and tireless self-promotion ensured that he never rose to the highest levels in government that he so desperately coveted. His story is thus the story of America during its era of supremacy: its strength, drive, and sense of possibility, as well as its penchant for overreach and heedless self-confidence. In Our Man, drawn from Holbrooke's diaries and papers, we are given a nonfiction narrative that is both intimate and epic in its revelatory portrait of this extraordinary and deeply flawed man and the elite spheres of society and government he inhabited.

No survey can capture the breadth and depth of the anti-Americanism that has swept Europe in recent years. From ultraconservative Bavarian grandmothers to thirty-year-old socialist activists in Greece, from globalization opponents to corporate executives--Europeans are joining in an ever louder chorus of disdain for America. For the first time, anti-Americanism has become a European lingua franca. In this sweeping and provocative look at the history of European aversion to America, Andrei Markovits argues that understanding the ubiquity of anti-Americanism since September 11, 2001, requires an appreciation of such sentiments among European elites going back at least to July 4, 1776. While George W. Bush's policies have catapulted anti-Americanism into overdrive, particularly in Western Europe, Markovits argues that this loathing has long been driven not by what America does, but by what it is. Focusing on seven Western European countries big and small, he shows how antipathies toward things American embrace aspects of everyday life--such as sports, language, work, education, media, health, and law--that remain far from the purview of the Bush administration's policies. Aggravating Europeans' antipathies toward America is their alleged helplessness in the face of an Americanization that they view as inexorably befalling them. More troubling, Markovits argues, is that this anti-Americanism has cultivated a new strain of anti-Semitism. Above all, he shows that while Europeans are far apart in terms of their everyday lives and shared experiences, their not being American provides them with a powerful common identity--one that elites have already begun to harness in their quest to construct a unified Europe to rival America.

"Diplomacy is essential to the conduct of foreign policy and international business in the twenty-first century. Yet, few international actors are trained to understand or practice effective diplomacy. Poor diplomacy has contributed to repeated setbacks for the United States and other major powers in the last decade. Drawing on deep historical research, this book aims to 'reinvent' diplomacy for our current era. The original and comparative research provides a foundation for thinking about what successful outreach, negotiation, and relationship-building with foreign actors should look like. Instead of focusing only on failures, as most studies do, this one interrogates success. The book provides a framework for defining successful diplomacy and implementing it in diverse contexts. Chapters analyze the activities of diverse diplomats (including state and non-state actors) in enduring cases, including: post-WWII relief, the rise of the non-aligned movement, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the U.S. opening to China, the Camp David Accords, the reunification of Germany, the creation of the European Union, the completion of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and relief aid to pre-2001 Afghanistan. The cases are diverse and historical, but they are written with an eye toward contemporary challenges and opportunities. The book closes with systematic reflections on how current diplomats can improve their activities abroad. Foreign Policy Breakthroughs offers rigorous historical insights for present policy"--

I think that if persons concerned about the problems of Jews and Zionism could have but one book on the subject on their shelf, it should be this one.-- Socialism and Democracy The Zionist movement has had an unprecedented impact on global politics. The quest for a Jewish nation-state has caused turmoil and despair for the Palestinian people and has redefined what it means to be Jewish. Prominent American activist and intellectual Joel Kovel has written a critical exploration of the history of Zionism, arguing that a one-state solution is the only viable option for peace. Kovel recounts the extraordinary genesis of the Zionist movement and the explicit goals of its founders to create a Jewish-only state in Palestine. He examines how the pursuit of this path has changed the nature of Jewry, the fate of the Palestinian people, and the relationship between the Western and the Muslim world. Kovel's passionate concern for social justice makes him unable to accept the two-state solution for Palestine and Israel as a path to peace, and incapable of reconciling his Jewish identity with the goals of Zionism.

Very few Americans regretted seeing Thomas Jefferson leave the White House in the winter of 1809. The man who led the Republican party from opposition to power and who overwhelmingly defeated Charles C. Pinckney in 1804 had had a disastrous second term. The military stalemate in Europe with Napoleon controlling the continent and the Royal Navy ruling the seas ushered the Franco-British war into a new phase of blockades and counter-blockades with both sides raiding neutral American shipping. The administration responded by prohibiting all American exports to the belligerents. The Embargo brought the booming American economy to a screeching halt, and as economic distress grew resentment over the measure spread from merchants to farmers and mechanics.The Origins of Jeffersonian Commercial Policy and Diplomacy examines the evolution of Jefferson's commercial ideas and policies from his days as a young revolutionary to his presidency. It analyzes the way in which Jefferson worked out his conflicting approaches to commerce not only as a thinker but also as a policy maker. It examines the tensions between rejecting commerce altogether as a threat to republican virtue, and promoting commerce as a necessary vehicle for the maintenance of American prosperity. It traces Jefferson's life-long commitment to the policy of commercial coercion and places American policy in the context of the global competition between England and France. Without deviating from the narrative format, Professor Ben-Atar reflects on a variety of contested issues in early American historiography, from the debate over eighteenth-century republicanism to the birth of American foreign policy.