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This "uncommonly astute study" examines the early development of the US-UK military alliance that would eventually lead to victory in WWII (Paul Miles, author of FDR's Admiral). On December 12, 1937, Japanese aircraft sank the American gunboat Panay outside Nanjing, China. Although the Japanese apologized, President Roosevelt set Captain Royal Ingersoll to London to begin conversations with the British admiralty about Japanese aggression in the Far East. While few Americans remember the Panay Incident, it was the start of what would become the "Special Relationship" between the United States and Great Britain. In The Origins of the Grand Alliance, William T. Johnsen provides the first compre...
Robert Jervis (1940–2021) was a titan in the field of international relations. Part political scientist, part psychologist, part historian, and part policy analyst, he drew on a vast array of theoretical approaches and empirical methods to develop keen and distinctive insights on a wide range of topics. From academic political science to the policy world, the scope of Jervis’s influence is astonishing. Bringing together top scholars in political science, international relations, and history, this book offers a deep dive into Jervis’s pathbreaking scholarship and its legacy across disciplines. The authors consider how his work reshaped subjects such as nuclear strategy, arms control, de...
A contentious debate lingers over whether Franklin Delano Roosevelt turned his back on the Jews of Hitler’s Europe. FDR and the Jews reveals a concerned leader whose efforts on behalf of Jews were far greater than those of any other world figure but whose moral leadership was tempered by the political realities of depression and war.
What makes wars drag on and why do they end when they do? Here H. E. Goemans brings theoretical rigor and empirical depth to a long-standing question of securities studies. He explores how various government leaders assess the cost of war in terms of domestic politics and their own postwar fates. Goemans first develops the argument that two sides will wage war until both gain sufficient knowledge of the other's strengths and weaknesses so as to agree on the probable outcome of continued war. Yet the incentives that motivate leaders to then terminate war, Goemans maintains, can vary greatly depending on the type of government they represent. The author looks at democracies, dictatorships, and...
The 1940s was probably the most dramatic and decisive decade of the 20th century. This volume explores the Second World War and the origins of the Cold War from the vantage point of two of the great powers of that era, Britain and the USA, and of their wartime leaders, Churchill and Roosevelt. It also looks at their chequered relations with Stalin and at how the Grand Alliance crumbled into an undesired Cold War. But this is not simply a story of top-level diplomacy. David Reynolds explores the social and cultural implications of the wartime Anglo-American alliance, particularly the impact of nearly three million GIs on British life, and reflects more generally on the importance of cultural ...
Stunning shifts in the worldviews of states mark the modern history of international affairs: how do societies think about—and rethink—international order and security? Japan's "opening," German conquest, American internationalism, Maoist independence, and Gorbachev's "new thinking" molded international conflict and cooperation in their eras. How do we explain such momentous changes in foreign policy—and in other cases their equally surprising absence? The nature of strategic ideas, Jeffrey W. Legro argues, played a critical and overlooked role in these transformations. Big changes in foreign policies are rare because it is difficult for individuals to overcome the inertia of entrenche...
Franklin Roosevelt's intentions during the three years between Munich and Pearl Harbor have been a source of controversy among historians for decades. Barbara Farnham offers both a theory of how the domestic political context affects foreign policy decisions in general and a fresh interpretation of FDR's post-Munich policies based on the insights that the theory provides. Between 1936 and 1938, Roosevelt searched for ways to influence the deteriorating international situation. When Hitler's behavior during the Munich crisis showed him to be incorrigibly aggressive, FDR settled on aiding the democracies, a course to which he adhered until America's entry into the war. This policy attracted hi...
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