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Back to Anthology Series

Last Updated 12/24/14

Best International Relations Books of 2014

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 2014.

33 Articles

33 Articles

Table of Contents

I

Editor's Picks

December 26, 2014

December 26, 2014

Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China

December 26, 2014

December 26, 2014

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

December 26, 2014

December 26, 2014

The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001–2014

II

G. John Ikenberry: Political and Legal

January/February 2015

January/February 2015

Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy

G. John Ikenberry

January/February 2015

January/February 2015

Dictators at War and Peace

G. John Ikenberry

November/December 2014

November/December 2014

The Deluge: The Great War, America, and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916–1931

G. John Ikenberry

III

Richard N. Cooper: Economic, Social, and Environmental

The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility

Richard N. Cooper

March/April 2014

March/April 2014

How Much Have Global Problems Cost the World? A Scorecard From 1900 to 2050

Richard N. Cooper

September/October 2014

September/October 2014

The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business

Richard N. Cooper

IV

Lawrence D. Freedman: Military, Scientific, and Technological

January/February 2014

January/February 2014

Churchill’s Bomb: How the United States Overtook Britain in the First Nuclear Arms Race

Lawrence D. Freedman

January/February 2015

January/February 2015

The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege: A Sensory History of the Civil War

Lawrence D. Freedman

November/December 2014

November/December 2014

Agent Storm: My Life Inside al-Qaeda and the CIA

Lawrence D. Freedman

V

Walter Russell Mead: The United States

March/April 2014

March/April 2014

Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House

Walter Russell Mead

September/October 2014

September/October 2014

An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America

Walter Russell Mead

September/October 2014

September/October 2014

The Scorpion’s Sting: Anti-Slavery and the Coming of the Civil War

Walter Russell Mead

VI

Andrew Moravcsik: Western Europe

January/February 2015

January/February 2015

Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer

Andrew Moravcsik

September/October 2014

September/October 2014

Lessons From Europe? What Americans Can Learn From European Public Policies

Andrew Moravcsik

September/October 2014

September/October 2014

The Tragedy of the European Union: Disintegration or Revival?

Andrew Moravcsik

VII

Richard Feinberg: Western Hemisphere

December 26, 2014

December 26, 2014

Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana

Richard Feinberg

The Man Who Loved Dogs: A Novel

Richard Feinberg

September/October 2014

September/October 2014

Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America

Richard Feinberg

VIII

Robert Legvold: Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Republics

January/February 2015

January/February 2015

Stalin. Vol. 1, Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928

March/April 2014

March/April 2014

Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age From the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane

March/April 2014

March/April 2014

The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twenty-first Century

IX

John Waterbury: The Middle East

September/October 2014

September/October 2014

Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East

December 26, 2014

December 26, 2014

Sectarian Politics in the Gulf: From the Iraq War to the Arab Uprisings

September/October 2014

September/October 2014

Do Muslim Women Need Saving?

X

Andrew Nathan: Asia and the Pacific

March/April 2014

March/April 2014

Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development

Andrew J. Nathan

December 26, 2014

December 26, 2014

The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia

Andrew J. Nathan

Anxious Wealth: Money and Morality Among China’s New Rich

Andrew J. Nathan

XI

Nicolas van de Walle: Africa

January/February 2015

January/February 2015

State-Building and Multilingual Education in Africa

Nicolas van de Walle

November/December 2014

November/December 2014

China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa

Nicolas van de Walle

November/December 2014

November/December 2014

Property and Political Order in Africa: Land Rights and the Structure of Politics

Nicolas van de Walle

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