Best International Relations Books of 2012

November/December 2012 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

Advancing the Rule of Law Abroad: Next Generation Reform

Kleinfeld brings together a good grasp of the scholarship on law and society with the sensibilities and hard-earned experience of a field practitioner. The result is...

G. John Ikenberry

January/February 2013 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

The Dictator’s Learning Curve

In this engaging book, Dobson reports from such outposts of despotism as China, Malaysia, Russia, and Venezuela, detailing authoritarian regimes that are remarkably...

G. John Ikenberry

January/February 2013 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

The Second Nuclear Age: Strategy, Danger, and the New Power Politics

Bracken argues that since the end of the Cold War, a second nuclear age has begun, defined by an unstable, dangerous “multipolar nuclear order” in which the prevention...

G. John Ikenberry

September/October 2012 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

Economics After the Crisis: Objectives and Means

Turner makes the case that growth should not be sought as an end in itself in rich countries. Rather, the focus should be on creating economic freedom and making...

Richard N. Cooper

January/February 2013 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World?

Sharp increases in food prices in 2008 and again in 2012 reminded the world that food security cannot be taken for granted, especially for poor people. Can adequate...

Richard N. Cooper

January/February 2013 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy

In this engaging book, Janeway, a venture capitalist who trained as an economist, combines his academic erudition with lessons learned during 40 years of working in...

Richard N. Cooper

September/October 2012 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam

Logevall's megisterial book describes how the United States' role in former French Indochina developed during the 1950s; it is, in essence, pre-histories of the...

Lawrence D. Freedman

September/October 2012 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden From 9/11 to Abbottabad

Bergen captures the paradoxes of bin Laden's demise superbly, drawing on his excellent government sources, his deep knowledge of al Qaeda, and his reporter’s instincts...

Lawrence D. Freedman

November/December 2012 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

The Last Full Measure: How Soldiers Die in Battle

The NBC television show Stars Earn Stripes, co-hosted by the retired U.S. general and one-time presidential candidate Wesley Clark, purports to put minor...

Lawrence D. Freedman

November/December 2012 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet

Turner’s portrait of this unique American figure is balanced, thoughtful, and readable. It is a book that no student of the American West can afford to ignore.

Walter Russell Mead

November/December 2012 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy

Wide ranging, deeply researched, and clearly expressed, Preston’s history of the influence of religion on U.S. foreign policy, from Colonial times through the Obama...

Walter Russell Mead

January/February 2013 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861–1865

In this brilliant new look at the destruction of slavery during the American Civil War, Oakes reveals how the U.S. abolitionist movement relied not only on high-minded...

Walter Russell Mead

March/April 2012 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

Thinking the Twentieth Century

The late Judt was among the West’s leading public intellectuals and among the greatest intellectual historians of the West.

Andrew Moravcsik

November/December 2012 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

The Myth of the Muslim Tide: Do Immigrants Threaten the West?

Saunders has written a must-read takedown of anti-Muslim conservatives, demonstrating that their major claims are simply false.

Andrew Moravcsik

November/December 2012 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

Fortress Europe: Dispatches from a Gated Continent

Carr argues that a combination of internal liberalization and external hardening has increased criminal, abusive, and often deadly human trafficking, while only...

Andrew Moravcsik

September/October 2012 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

Cuban Economic and Social Development: Policy Reforms and Challenges in the Twenty-first Century

In this informative collection, leading Cuban social scientists express their frustration at the slow pace of economic reform, even as they recognize that the...

Richard Feinberg

September/October 2012 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

State-Building and Tax Regimes in Central America

Schneider hopes the middle and popular classes in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras will mobilize on behalf of more egalitarian fiscal policies and stronger states...

Richard Feinberg

January/February 2013 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

Brazil, the United States, and the South American Subsystem: Regional Politics and the Absent Empire

Teixeira, a rising Brazilian scholar, forcefully makes the case that the United States has employed radically different policies in Mexico and the Caribbean basin than...

Richard Feinberg

September/October 2012 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

Worlds of Dissent: Charter 77, the Plastic People of the Universe, and Czech Culture Under Communism

In an intelligent, fluent study of Czechoslovak dissent in the 1970s and 1980s, Bolton pushes aside the mythologized image of Czechoslovak dissidents and examines the...

Robert Legvold

November/December 2012 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

Roads to the Temple: Truth, Memory, Ideas, and Ideals in the Making of the Russian Revolution, 1987–1991

It might seem oxymoronic to speak of shining moments during the waning years of the Soviet Union, but Aron more than justifies the description with a stunning portrait...

Robert Legvold

January/February 2013 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

Wheel of Fortune: The Battle for Oil and Power in Russia

Few have studied the Russian oil and gas industry longer or with a broader political perspective than Gustafson. The result is this superb book, which is not merely a...

Robert Legvold

May/June 2012 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama’s Diplomacy With Iran

Parsi argues that there is still a chance for diplomacy to allow the United States and Iran to break out of their “institutionalized enmity.”

L. Carl Brown

November/December 2012 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire

The book’s title issues a stark indictment; the text methodically and dispassionately sustains it. The fact that a Turkish historian with access to the Ottoman...

John Waterbury

January/February 2013 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

Muslim Nationalism and the New Turks

Drawing on four decades of direct observation of Turkish society, White explores the complexities of evolving notions of Turkish identity. She focuses mainly on the...

John Waterbury

September/October 2012 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future

This is a meaty, fast-paced portrait of North Korean society, economy, politics, and foreign policy by an expert who has studied the regime as a scholar and interacted...

Andrew J. Nathan

November/December 2012 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

Poverty Amid Plenty in the New India

India’s economic reforms of the 1980s through the first decade of this century unleashed private enterprise, encouraged foreign investment, and expanded foreign trade....

Andrew J. Nathan

Politics & Society November/December 2012 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

Double Paradox: Rapid Growth and Rising Corruption in China

The politicization of prosecutions for corruption in China makes official data untrustworthy, but Wedeman has still found plausible ways to assess different types of...

Andrew J. Nathan

September/October 2012 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

The Night Wanderers: Uganda’s Children and the Lord’s Resistance Army

Jagielski's semifictional account of child soldiers in Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army paints a bleak picture of northern Uganda, where Kony’s rebellion has...

Nicolas van de Walle

November/December 2012 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

China and Africa: A Century of Engagement

The increased Chinese attention to Africa has been one of the region’s big stories during the last decade, not least because it seemed to come just as the West was...

Nicolas van de Walle

January/February 2013 Capsule Review

Paywall-Free

RethinkHIV: Smarter Ways to Invest in Ending HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa

Lomborg believes that better policies can come only from dispassionate cost-benefit analysis—which is just what his organization, the Copenhagen Consensus Center,...

Nicolas van de Walle

Foreign Affairs Anthology Series

Best International Relations Books of 2012

Every year, ten scholars review dozens of recently published academic and popular nonfiction books for Foreign Affairs. As this year came to a close, the editors asked each of the reviewers to choose the three best of 2012.

Table of Contents

G. John Ikenberry: Political and Legal

Richard N. Cooper: Economic, Social, and Environmental

Lawrence D. Freedman: Military, Scientific, and Technological

Walter Russell Mead: The United States

Andrew Moravcsik: Western Europe

Richard Feinberg: Western Hemisphere

Robert Legvold: Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Republics

L. Carl Brown and John Waterbury: The Middle East

Andrew Nathan: Asia and the Pacific

Nicolas van de Walle: Africa

Must-Read Anthologies