Random House New Releases - Political Science - International Relations

Maximalist by Stephen Sestanovich

2014-02-11T00:30:00-05:00

Maximalist America in the World from Truman to Obama
Written by Stephen Sestanovich

Hardcover, 368 pages | Knopf | History - United States - 20th Century; Political Science - International Relations - Diplomacy; Political Science - International Security | $28.95 | 978-0-307-26817-4 (0-307-26817-9)

From a writer with long and high-level experience in the U.S. government, a lively, provocative, and eminently readable reexamination of American foreign policy, capturing not only its extraordinary achievements but the diplomatic missteps, intellectual confusion, and political discord from which they usually emerge.

American foreign policy since World War II has long been seen primarily as a story of strong and successful alliances, domestic consensus, and continuity from one administration to the next. Why then have so many presidents--even those most admired today--left office condemned for their foreign policy record? In his fresh and compelling history of America's rise to dominance, Stephen Sestanovich makes clear that U.S. diplomacy has always stirred controversy, both at home and abroad. He shows how successive administrations have struggled to find new solutions, alternating between bold "maximalist" strategies and retrenchment efforts to downsize America's role. Almost all our presidents--and all their most important decisions, from defeat in Vietnam through victory in the Cold War to today's new challenges--emerge from this vivid retelling in a sharp and unexpected light.

Maximalist by Stephen Sestanovich

2014-02-11T00:30:00-05:00

Maximalist America in the World from Truman to Obama
Written by Stephen Sestanovich

eBook, 368 pages | Knopf | History - United States - 20th Century; Political Science - International Relations - Diplomacy; Political Science - International Security | $ | 978-0-385-34966-6 (0-385-34966-1)

The Contest of the Century by Geoff Dyer

2014-02-04T00:30:00-05:00

The Contest of the Century The New Era of Competition with China--and How America Can Win
Written by Geoff Dyer

eBook, 304 pages | Knopf | Business & Economics - International; Political Science - International Relations; Political Science - Globalization | $ | 978-0-307-96078-8 (0-307-96078-1)

From the former Financial Times Beijing bureau chief, a balanced and far-seeing analysis of the emerging competition between China and America that will dominate twenty-first-century world affairs. It is both an inside account of Beijing's new quest for influence and an explanation of how America can come out on top.

China's rise has entered a new and critical phase where it seeks to turn its economic heft into global power and influence. In this deeply informed book, Geoff Dyer makes a lucid and convincing argument that China and the U.S. are now embarking on a great power-style competition that will dominate the century. With its new navy, China is trying to ease the U.S. out of Asia and reassert its traditional leadership. Beijing is planning to turn the renminbi into the main international currency, toppling the dominance of the U.S. dollar. And by investing billions to send its media groups overseas, it hopes to shift the global debate about democracy and individual rights. China is taking the first steps in an ambitious international agenda. Yet China will struggle to unseat the U.S. China's new ambitions are provoking intense anxiety, especially in Asia, while America's global influence has deep roots. If Washington can adjust to a world in which it is no longer dominant but still immensely powerful, it can retain its ability to set the global agenda in the face of China's challenge. At a time of great uncertainty about America's future, this is an essential book for businessmen, politicians, financiers, and anyone interested in current world affairs.

The Contest of the Century by Geoff Dyer

2014-02-04T00:30:00-05:00

The Contest of the Century The New Era of Competition with China--and How America Can Win
Written by Geoff Dyer

Hardcover, 304 pages | Knopf | Business & Economics - International; Political Science - International Relations; Political Science - Globalization | $26.95 | 978-0-307-96075-7 (0-307-96075-7)

Those Angry Days by Lynne Olson

2014-01-14T00:30:00-05:00

Those Angry Days Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941
Written by Lynne Olson

Trade Paperback, 592 pages | Random House Trade Paperbacks | History - United States - 20th Century; Political Science - International Relations; History - Military - World War II | $16.00 | 978-0-8129-8214-5 (0-8129-8214-2)

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

From the acclaimed author of Citizens of London comes the definitive account of the debate over American intervention in World War II—a bitter, sometimes violent clash of personalities and ideas that divided the nation and ultimately determined the fate of the free world.

At the center of this controversy stood the two most famous men in America: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who championed the interventionist cause, and aviator Charles Lindbergh, who as unofficial leader and spokesman for America’s isolationists emerged as the president’s most formidable adversary. Their contest of wills personified the divisions within the country at large, and Lynne Olson makes masterly use of their dramatic personal stories to create a poignant and riveting narrative. While FDR, buffeted by political pressures on all sides, struggled to marshal public support for aid to Winston Churchill’s Britain, Lindbergh saw his heroic reputation besmirched—and his marriage thrown into turmoil—by allegations that he was a Nazi sympathizer.

Spanning the years 1939 to 1941, Those Angry Days vividly re-creates the rancorous internal squabbles that gripped the United States in the period leading up to Pearl Harbor. After Germany vanquished most of Europe, America found itself torn between its traditional isolationism and the urgent need to come to the aid of Britain, the only country still battling Hitler. The conflict over intervention was, as FDR noted, “a dirty fight,” rife with chicanery and intrigue, and Those Angry Days recounts every bruising detail. In Washington, a group of high-ranking military officers, including the Air Force chief of staff, worked to sabotage FDR’s pro-British policies. Roosevelt, meanwhile, authorized FBI wiretaps of Lindbergh and other opponents of intervention. At the same time, a covert British operation, approved by the president, spied on antiwar groups, dug up dirt on congressional isolationists, and planted propaganda in U.S. newspapers.

The stakes could not have been higher. The combatants were larger than life. With the immediacy of a great novel, Those Angry Days brilliantly recalls a time fraught with danger when the future of democracy and America’s role in the world hung in the balance.

Praise for Those Angry Days

“In Those Angry Days, journalist-turned-historian Lynne Olson captures [the] period in a fast-moving, highly readable narrative punctuated by high drama. It’s . . . popular history at its most riveting, detailing what the author rightfully characterizes as ‘a brutal, no-holds-barred battle for the soul of the nation.’ It is sure to captivate readers seeking a deeper understanding of how public opinion gradually shifted as America moved from bystander to combatant in the war to preserve democracy.”—Associated Press

“Olson has shone a dramatic light on the complexities of the issue and skillfully portrayed the protagonists of an almost forgotten crisis in American history.”—Newsweek/The Daily Beast

“[An] absorbing chronicle . . . [Olson] doesn’t so much revisit a historical period as inhabit it; her scenes flicker as urgently as a newsreel. While highlighting Lindbergh and FDR as its stars, Those Angry Days embraces a cast of characters far beyond the book’s title characters.”—The Christian Science Monitor

From the Hardcover edition.

The Dispensable Nation by Vali Nasr

2014-01-07T00:30:00-05:00

The Dispensable Nation American Foreign Policy in Retreat
Written by Vali Nasr

Trade Paperback, 320 pages | Anchor | Political Science - International Relations; History - Middle East; Political Science - Political Freedom & Security | $16.00 | 978-0-345-80257-6 (0-345-80257-8)

In a brilliant and revealing book destined to drive debate about the future of American power, Vali Nasr questions America’s dangerous choice to engage less and matter less in the world.

Vali Nasr, author of the groundbreaking The Shia Revival, worked closely with Hillary Clinton at the State Department on Afghan and Pakistani affairs. In The Dispensable Nation, he takes us behind the scenes to show how Secretary Clinton and her ally, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, were thwarted in their efforts to guide an ambitious policy in South Asia and the Middle East. Instead, four years of presidential leadership and billions of dollars of U.S. spending failed to advance democracy and development, producing mainly rage at the United States for its perceived indifference to the fate of the region.

After taking office in 2009, the Obama administration had an opportunity to fundamentally reshape American foreign policy, Nasr argues, but its fear of political backlash and the specter of terrorism drove it to pursue the same questionable strategies as its predecessor. Meanwhile, the true economic threats to U.S. power, China and Russia, were quietly expanding their influence in places where America has long held sway.

Nasr makes a compelling case that behind specific flawed decisions lurked a desire by the White House to pivot away from the complex problems of the Muslim world. Drawing on his unrivaled expertise in Middle East affairs and firsthand experience in diplomacy, Nasr demonstrates why turning our backs is dangerous and, what’s more, sells short American power. The United States has secured stability, promoted prosperity, and built democracy in region after region since the end of the Second World War, he reminds us, and The Dispensable Nation offers a striking vision of what it can achieve when it reclaims its bold leadership in the world.

Engineers of Victory by Paul Kennedy

2013-12-10T00:30:00-05:00

Engineers of Victory The Problem Solvers Who Turned The Tide in the Second World War
Written by Paul Kennedy

Trade Paperback, 480 pages | Random House Trade Paperbacks | History - Military - World War II; Political Science - International Relations; Technology & Engineering - Marine & Naval | $16.00 | 978-0-8129-7939-8 (0-8129-7939-7)

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Paul Kennedy, award-winning author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers and one of today’s most renowned historians, now provides a new and unique look at how World War II was won. Engineers of Victory is a fascinating nuts-and-bolts account of the strategic factors that led to Allied victory. Kennedy reveals how the leaders’ grand strategy was carried out by the ordinary soldiers, scientists, engineers, and businessmen responsible for realizing their commanders’ visions of success.

In January 1943, FDR and Churchill convened in Casablanca and established the Allied objectives for the war: to defeat the Nazi blitzkrieg; to control the Atlantic sea lanes and the air over western and central Europe; to take the fight to the European mainland; and to end Japan’s imperialism. Astonishingly, a little over a year later, these ambitious goals had nearly all been accomplished. With riveting, tactical detail, Engineers of Victory reveals how.

Kennedy recounts the inside stories of the invention of the cavity magnetron, a miniature radar “as small as a soup plate,” and the Hedgehog, a multi-headed grenade launcher that allowed the Allies to overcome the threat to their convoys crossing the Atlantic; the critical decision by engineers to install a super-charged Rolls-Royce engine in the P-51 Mustang, creating a fighter plane more powerful than the Luftwaffe’s; and the innovative use of pontoon bridges (made from rafts strung together) to help Russian troops cross rivers and elude the Nazi blitzkrieg. He takes readers behind the scenes, unveiling exactly how thousands of individual Allied planes and fighting ships were choreographed to collectively pull off the invasion of Normandy, and illuminating how crew chiefs perfected the high-flying and inaccessible B-29 Superfortress that would drop the atomic bombs on Japan.

The story of World War II is often told as a grand narrative, as if it were fought by supermen or decided by fate. Here Kennedy uncovers the real heroes of the war, highlighting for the first time the creative strategies, tactics, and organizational decisions that made the lofty Allied objectives into a successful reality. In an even more significant way, Engineers of Victory has another claim to our attention, for it restores “the middle level of war” to its rightful place in history.

Praise for Engineers of Victory

“Engineers of Victory achieves the difficult task of being a consistently original book about one of the most relentlessly examined episodes in human history. . . . Like an engineer who pries open a pocket watch to reveal its inner mechanics, Kennedy tells how little-known men and woman at lower levels helped win the war. . . . An important contribution to our understanding of World War II.”—Michael Beschloss, The New York Times Book Review

“In this valuable addition to the very long shelf of recent books about World War II, Kennedy looks at the 18 months before the D-Day invasion in June 1944. . . . As he walks the reader through the critical breakthroughs required to achieve such daunting tasks as attacking an enemy shore thousands of miles from home, Kennedy colorfully and convincingly illustrates the ingenuity and persistence of a few men who made all the difference.”—The Washington Post

From the Hardcover edition.

The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay by Hooman Majd

2013-11-05T00:30:00-05:00

The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay An American Family in Iran
Written by Hooman Majd

eBook, 272 pages | Doubleday | Political Science - International Relations; Biography & Autobiography - Personal Memoirs; Social Science | $13.99 | 978-0-385-53533-5 (0-385-53533-3)

With U.S.–Iran relations at a thirty-year low, Iranian-American writer Hooman Majd dared to take his young family on a year-long sojourn in Tehran. The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay traces their domestic adventures and closely tracks the political drama of a terrible year for Iran's government.

It was an annus horribilis for Iran's Supreme Leader. The Green Movement had been crushed, but the regime was on edge, anxious lest democratic protests resurge. International sanctions were dragging down the economy while talk of war with the West grew. Hooman Majd was there for all of it. A new father at age fifty, he decided to take his blonde, blue-eyed Midwestern yoga instructor wife Karri and his adorable, only-eats-organic infant son Khash from their hip Brooklyn neighborhood to spend a year in the land of his birth. It was to be a year of discovery for Majd, too, who had only lived in Iran as a child.

The book opens ominously as Majd is stopped at the airport by intelligence officers who show him a four-inch thick security file about his books and journalism and warn him not to write about Iran during his stay. Majd brushes it off—but doesn't tell Karri—and the family soon settles in to the rituals of middle class life in Tehran: finding an apartment (which requires many thousands of dollars, all of which, bafflingly, is returned to you when you leave), a secure internet connection (one that persuades the local censors you are in New York) and a bootlegger (self-explanatory). Karri masters the head scarf, but not before being stopped for mal-veiling, twice. They endure fasting at Ramadan and keep up with Khash in a country weirdly obsessed with children.

All the while, Majd fields calls from security officers and he and Karri eye the headlines—the arrest of an American "spy," the British embassy riots, the Arab Spring—and wonder if they are pushing their luck. The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay is a sparkling account of life under a quixotic authoritarian regime that offers rare and intimate insight into a country and its people, as well as a personal story of exile and a search for the meaning of home.

The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay by Hooman Majd

2013-11-05T00:30:00-05:00

The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay An American Family in Iran
Written by Hooman Majd

Hardcover, 272 pages | Doubleday | Political Science - International Relations; Biography & Autobiography - Personal Memoirs; Social Science | $26.95 | 978-0-385-53532-8 (0-385-53532-5)

The War That Ended Peace by Margaret MacMillan

2013-10-29T00:30:00-05:00

The War That Ended Peace The Road to 1914
Written by Margaret MacMillan

Unabridged Compact Disc | Random House Audio | Political Science - International Relations; History - Military - World War I; History - Europe - Western | $50.00 | 978-0-8041-2740-0 (0-8041-2740-9)

From the bestselling and award-winning author of Paris 1919 comes a gripping work of narrative nonfiction, a riveting story of Europe and the world in the years leading up to World War I. Master writer and historian Margaret MacMillan creates a fascinating portrait of the personalities and factors that pushed Europe over the brink into a catastrophic, world-changing conflagration.

The century since the end of the Napoleonic wars had been the most peaceful era Europe had known since the fall of the Roman Empire. In the first years of the twentieth century, Europe believed it was marching to a golden, happy, and prosperous future. But instead, the continent walked over a cliff into a war that killed millions, destroyed economies, tore apart empires, and fatally undermined Europe’s dominance of the world. With a sweeping narrative, vivid characters, and sharp insight, Margaret MacMillan powerfully evokes the decisions made, and the economic, social, political, and human tensions that determined the lead-up to the war. Colonial rivalries, ethnic nationalism, Germany’s rise to power, shifting alliances, and the belief in social Darwinism—that competition among nations was part of nature’s rule and that the strongest would rightfully emerge victorious—all exerted influence. Illuminating, absorbing, and beautifully written, The War That Ended Peace is a masterly work about the transformation of Europe, and the world.

The War That Ended Peace by Margaret MacMillan

2013-10-29T00:30:00-05:00

The War That Ended Peace The Road to 1914
Written by Margaret MacMillan

Unabridged Audiobook Download | Random House Audio | Political Science - International Relations; History - Military - World War I; History - Europe - Western | $25.00 | 978-0-8041-2741-7 (0-8041-2741-7)

The War That Ended Peace by Margaret MacMillan

2013-10-29T00:30:00-05:00

The War That Ended Peace The Road to 1914
Written by Margaret MacMillan

Hardcover, 800 pages | Random House | Political Science - International Relations; History - Military - World War I; History - Europe - Western | $35.00 | 978-1-4000-6855-5 (1-4000-6855-X)

The War That Ended Peace by Margaret MacMillan

2013-10-29T00:30:00-05:00

The War That Ended Peace The Road to 1914
Written by Margaret MacMillan

eBook, 800 pages | Random House | Political Science - International Relations; History - Military - World War I; History - Europe - Western | $18.99 | 978-0-8129-9470-4 (0-8129-9470-1)

The Blood Telegram by Gary J. Bass

2013-09-24T00:30:00-05:00

The Blood Telegram Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide
Written by Gary J. Bass

Hardcover, 528 pages | Knopf | History - India; Political Science - International Relations - Diplomacy; Political Science - Political Freedom & Security - Human Rights | $30.00 | 978-0-307-70020-9 (0-307-70020-8)

A riveting history--the first full account--of the involvement of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in the 1971 atrocities in Bangladesh that led to war between India and Pakistan, shaped the fate of Asia, and left in its wake a host of major strategic consequences for the world today.

Drawing on recently declassified documents, unheard White House tapes, and investigative reporting, Gary Bass gives us an unprecedented chronicle of a crucial but little-known chapter of the Cold War. He shows how Nixon and Kissinger supported Pakistan's military dictatorship as it brutally quashed the results of a historic free election. The Pakistani army launched a crackdown on what was then East Pakistan (today an independent Bangladesh), killing hundreds of thousands of people, and sending ten million refugees fleeing into India--one of the worst humanitarian crises of the twentieth century. It soon sparked a major war. But Nixon and Kissinger remained untroubled by Pakistan's massacres, secretly encouraged China to mass troops on the Indian border, and illegally supplied weapons to the Pakistani military--an unknown scandal that presages Watergate. And Bass makes clear how the United States's embrace of the military dictatorship in Islamabad would affect geopolitics for decades. A revelatory, compulsively readable work of essential recent history.

The Blood Telegram by Gary J. Bass

2013-09-24T00:30:00-05:00

The Blood Telegram Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide
Written by Gary J. Bass

eBook, 528 pages | Knopf | History - India; Political Science - International Relations - Diplomacy; Political Science - Political Freedom & Security - Human Rights | $14.99 | 978-0-385-35047-1 (0-385-35047-3)

The Revenge of Geography by Robert D. Kaplan

2013-09-10T00:30:00-05:00

The Revenge of Geography What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate
Written by Robert D. Kaplan

Trade Paperback, 448 pages | Random House Trade Paperbacks | Political Science - International Relations; History - Historical Geography; Social Science - Human Geography | $16.00 | 978-0-8129-8222-0 (0-8129-8222-3)

In this provocative, startling book, Robert D. Kaplan, the bestselling author of Monsoon and Balkan Ghosts, offers a revelatory new prism through which to view global upheavals and to understand what lies ahead for continents and countries around the world.

In The Revenge of Geography, Kaplan builds on the insights, discoveries, and theories of great geographers and geopolitical thinkers of the near and distant past to look back at critical pivots in history and then to look forward at the evolving global scene. Kaplan traces the history of the world’s hot spots by examining their climates, topographies, and proximities to other embattled lands. The Russian steppe’s pitiless climate and limited vegetation bred hard and cruel men bent on destruction, for example, while Nazi geopoliticians distorted geopolitics entirely, calculating that space on the globe used by the British Empire and the Soviet Union could be swallowed by a greater German homeland.

Kaplan then applies the lessons learned to the present crises in Europe, Russia, China, the Indian subcontinent, Turkey, Iran, and the Arab Middle East. The result is a holistic interpretation of the next cycle of conflict throughout Eurasia. Remarkably, the future can be understood in the context of temperature, land allotment, and other physical certainties: China, able to feed only 23 percent of its people from land that is only 7 percent arable, has sought energy, minerals, and metals from such brutal regimes as Burma, Iran, and Zimbabwe, putting it in moral conflict with the United States. Afghanistan’s porous borders will keep it the principal invasion route into India, and a vital rear base for Pakistan, India’s main enemy. Iran will exploit the advantage of being the only country that straddles both energy-producing areas of the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. Finally, Kaplan posits that the United States might rue engaging in far-flung conflicts with Iraq and Afghanistan rather than tending to its direct neighbor Mexico, which is on the verge of becoming a semifailed state due to drug cartel carnage.

A brilliant rebuttal to thinkers who suggest that globalism will trump geography, this indispensable work shows how timeless truths and natural facts can help prevent this century’s looming cataclysms.

Praise for The Revenge of Geography

“[An] ambitious and challenging new book . . . [The Revenge of Geography] displays a formidable grasp of contemporary world politics and serves as a powerful reminder that it has been the planet’s geophysical configurations, as much as the flow of competing religions and ideologies, that have shaped human conflicts, past and present.”—Malise Ruthven, The New York Review of Books

“Robert D. Kaplan, the world-traveling reporter and intellectual whose fourteen books constitute a bedrock of penetrating exposition and analysis on the post-Cold War world . . . strips away much of the cant that suffuses public discourse these days on global developments and gets to a fundamental reality: that geography remains today, as it has been throughout history, one of the most powerful drivers of world events.”—The National Interest

“Kaplan plunges into a planetary review that is often thrilling in its sheer scale . . . encyclopedic.”—The New Yorker

“[The Revenge of Geography] serves the facts straight up. . . . Kaplan’s realism and willingness to face hard facts make The Revenge of Geography a valuable antidote to the feel-good manifestoes that often masquerade as strategic thought.”—The Daily Beast

From the Hardcover edition.

Lawrence in Arabia by Scott Anderson

2013-08-06T00:30:00-05:00

Lawrence in Arabia War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East
Written by Scott Anderson

Hardcover, 592 pages | Doubleday | History - Middle East; History - Military - World War I; Political Science - International Relations - Diplomacy | $28.95 | 978-0-385-53292-1 (0-385-53292-X)

A thrilling and revelatory narrative of one of the most epic and consequential periods in 20th century history—the Arab Revolt, and the secret game to control the Middle East

The Arab Revolt against the Turks in World War One was, in the words of T.E. Lawrence, "a sideshow of a sideshow." As a result, the conflict was shaped to a remarkable degree by a small handful of adventurers and low-level officers far removed from the corridors of power. Curt Pruefer was an academic attached to the German embassy in Cairo, whose clandestine role was to foment jihad against British rule. Aaron Aaronsohn was a renowned agronomist and committed Zionist who gained the trust of the Ottoman governor of Palestine even as he built an elaborate anti-Ottoman spy ring. William Yale was the fallen scion of the American aristocracy, who traveled the Ottoman Empire on behalf of Standard Oil, dissembling to the Turks in order to gain valuable oil concessions. At the center of it all was Lawrence. In early 1914 he was an archaeologist digging ruins in Syria; by 1917 he was riding into legend at the head of an Arab army, as he fought a rearguard action against his own government and its imperial ambitions.

Based on four years of intensive primary document research, LAWRENCE IN ARABIA definitively overturns received wisdom on how the modern Middle East was formed. Sweeping in its action, keen in its portraiture, acid in its condemnation of the destruction wrought by European colonial plots, this is a book that brilliantly captures the way in which the folly of the past creates the anguish of the present.

Lawrence in Arabia by Scott Anderson

2013-08-06T00:30:00-05:00

Lawrence in Arabia War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East
Written by Scott Anderson

eBook, 592 pages | Doubleday | History - Middle East; History - Military - World War I; Political Science - International Relations - Diplomacy | $14.99 | 978-0-385-53293-8 (0-385-53293-8)

Wealth and Power by John Delury

2013-07-16T00:30:00-05:00

Wealth and Power China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century
Written by Orville Schell and John Delury

Hardcover, 496 pages | Random House | History - China; History - Modern - 20th Century; Political Science - International Relations | $30.00 | 978-0-679-64347-0 (0-679-64347-8)

Through a series of lively and absorbing portraits of iconic modern Chinese leaders and thinkers, two of today’s foremost specialists on China provide a panoramic narrative of this country’s rise to preeminence that is at once analytical and personal. How did a nation, after a long and painful period of dynastic decline, intellectual upheaval, foreign occupation, civil war, and revolution, manage to burst forth onto the world stage with such an impressive run of hyperdevelopment and wealth creation—culminating in the extraordinary dynamism of China today?

Wealth and Power answers this question by examining the lives of eleven influential officials, writers, activists, and leaders whose contributions helped create modern China. This fascinating survey begins in the lead-up to the first Opium War with Wei Yuan, the nineteenth-century scholar and reformer who was one of the first to urge China to borrow ideas from the West. It concludes in our time with human-rights advocate and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, an outspoken opponent of single-party rule. Along the way, we meet such titans of Chinese history as the Empress Dowager Cixi, public intellectuals Feng Guifen, Liang Qichao, and Chen Duxiu, Nationalist stalwarts Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek, and Communist Party leaders Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Zhu Rongji.

The common goal that unites all of these disparate figures is their determined pursuit of fuqiang, “wealth and power.” This abiding quest for a restoration of national greatness in the face of a “century of humiliation” at the hands of the Great Powers came to define the modern Chinese character. It’s what drove both Mao and Deng to embark on root-and-branch transformations of Chinese society, first by means of Marxism-Leninism, then by authoritarian capitalism. And this determined quest remains the key to understanding many of China’s actions today.

By unwrapping the intellectual antecedents of today’s resurgent China, Orville Schell and John Delury supply much-needed insight into the country’s tortured progression from nineteenth-century decline to twenty-first-century boom. By looking backward into the past to understand forces at work for hundreds of years, they help us understand China today and the future that this singular country is helping shape for all of us.

Advance praise for Wealth and Power

“Wealth and Power offers everything readers might expect from its two eminent authors. The hardest challenge in writing about China, or finding things to read about it, is perceiving significant patterns while remaining aware of the chaos and contradictions. Orville Schell and John Delury meet that challenge in exemplary form.”—James Fallows, national correspondent, The Atlantic

“A brilliantly original and essential book . . . It is required reading for anyone seeking to understand China’s motives and the future of global competition, and is, quite simply, a pleasure to read. Vivid, literate, and brimming with insights, Wealth and Power deserves to become a classic.”—Evan Osnos, China correspondent, The New Yorker

“In Wealth and Power, Schell and Delury present us with the historical background to understand the driving mechanism that lies at the center of China today. By no longer presenting China’s past two centuries as a record of recurrent failures, they give us a portrait of a nation in the making, and of leaders with the skills and determination to redirect China’s energies on a global scale.”—Jonathan D. Spence, author of The Search for Modern China

Wealth and Power by John Delury

2013-07-16T00:30:00-05:00

Wealth and Power China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century
Written by Orville Schell and John Delury

eBook, 496 pages | Random House | History - China; History - Modern - 20th Century; Political Science - International Relations | $14.99 | 978-0-679-64538-2 (0-679-64538-1)

Random House New Releases - Political Science - International Relations

Maximalist by Stephen Sestanovich

Maximalist America in the World from Truman to ObamaWritten by Stephen Sestanovich

Maximalist by Stephen Sestanovich

Maximalist America in the World from Truman to ObamaWritten by Stephen Sestanovich

The Contest of the Century by Geoff Dyer

The Contest of the Century The New Era of Competition with China--and How America Can WinWritten by Geoff Dyer

The Contest of the Century by Geoff Dyer

The Contest of the Century The New Era of Competition with China--and How America Can WinWritten by Geoff Dyer

Those Angry Days by Lynne Olson

Those Angry Days Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941Written by Lynne Olson

The Dispensable Nation by Vali Nasr

The Dispensable Nation American Foreign Policy in RetreatWritten by Vali Nasr

Engineers of Victory by Paul Kennedy

Engineers of Victory The Problem Solvers Who Turned The Tide in the Second World WarWritten by Paul Kennedy

The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay by Hooman Majd

The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay An American Family in IranWritten by Hooman Majd

The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay by Hooman Majd

The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay An American Family in IranWritten by Hooman Majd

The War That Ended Peace by Margaret MacMillan

The War That Ended Peace The Road to 1914Written by Margaret MacMillan

The War That Ended Peace by Margaret MacMillan

The War That Ended Peace The Road to 1914Written by Margaret MacMillan

The War That Ended Peace by Margaret MacMillan

The War That Ended Peace The Road to 1914Written by Margaret MacMillan

The War That Ended Peace by Margaret MacMillan

The War That Ended Peace The Road to 1914Written by Margaret MacMillan

The Blood Telegram by Gary J. Bass

The Blood Telegram Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten GenocideWritten by Gary J. Bass

The Blood Telegram by Gary J. Bass

The Blood Telegram Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten GenocideWritten by Gary J. Bass

The Revenge of Geography by Robert D. Kaplan

The Revenge of Geography What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against FateWritten by Robert D. Kaplan

Lawrence in Arabia by Scott Anderson

Lawrence in Arabia War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle EastWritten by Scott Anderson

Lawrence in Arabia by Scott Anderson

Lawrence in Arabia War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle EastWritten by Scott Anderson

Wealth and Power by John Delury

Wealth and Power China's Long March to the Twenty-first CenturyWritten by Orville Schell and John Delury

Wealth and Power by John Delury

Wealth and Power China's Long March to the Twenty-first CenturyWritten by Orville Schell and John Delury

Maximalist America in the World from Truman to Obama
Written by Stephen Sestanovich

Maximalist America in the World from Truman to Obama
Written by Stephen Sestanovich

The Contest of the Century The New Era of Competition with China--and How America Can Win
Written by Geoff Dyer

The Contest of the Century The New Era of Competition with China--and How America Can Win
Written by Geoff Dyer

Those Angry Days Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941
Written by Lynne Olson

The Dispensable Nation American Foreign Policy in Retreat
Written by Vali Nasr

Engineers of Victory The Problem Solvers Who Turned The Tide in the Second World War
Written by Paul Kennedy

The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay An American Family in Iran
Written by Hooman Majd

The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay An American Family in Iran
Written by Hooman Majd

The War That Ended Peace The Road to 1914
Written by Margaret MacMillan

The War That Ended Peace The Road to 1914
Written by Margaret MacMillan

The War That Ended Peace The Road to 1914
Written by Margaret MacMillan

The War That Ended Peace The Road to 1914
Written by Margaret MacMillan

The Blood Telegram Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide
Written by Gary J. Bass

The Blood Telegram Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide
Written by Gary J. Bass

The Revenge of Geography What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate
Written by Robert D. Kaplan

Lawrence in Arabia War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East
Written by Scott Anderson

Lawrence in Arabia War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East
Written by Scott Anderson

Wealth and Power China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century
Written by Orville Schell and John Delury

Wealth and Power China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century
Written by Orville Schell and John Delury