New Books in National Security

By Marshall Poe

Social Sciences

What's New Books in National Security about?

Interviews with Scholars of National Security about their New Books

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New Books in National Security episodes:

04.28.2024
Michael De Groot, "Disruption: The Global Economic Shocks of the 1970s and the End of the Cold War" (Cornell UP, 2024)
In Disruption: The Global Economic Shocks of the 1970s and the End of the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2024), Dr. Michael De Groot argues that the global economic upheaval of the 1970s was decisive in ending the Cold War. Both the...
04.12.2024
David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts, "Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare From 1945 to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine" (Harper, 2023)
In this deep and incisive study, General David Petraeus, who commanded the US-led coalitions in both Iraq, during the Surge, and Afghanistan and former CIA director, and the prize-winning historian Andrew Roberts, explore over 70 years of conflict, drawing significant...
04.11.2024
Robert D. Kaplan, "The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China" (Random House, 2023)
The Middle East remains one of the world’s most complicated, thorny—and, uncharitably, unstable—parts of the world, as countless headlines make clear. Internal strife, regional competition and external interventions have been the region’s history for the past several decades. Robert Kaplan—author, foreign...
04.07.2024
Jonathan W. Hackett, "Theory of Irregular War" (McFarland, 2024)
From Afghanistan to Angola, Indonesia to Iran, and Colombia to Congo, violent reactions erupt, states collapse, and militaries relentlessly pursue operations doomed to fail. And yet, no useful theory exists to explain this common tragedy. All over the world, people...
03.26.2024
Anita R. Gohdes, "Repression in the Digital Age: Surveillance, Censorship, and the Dynamics of State Violence" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Global adoption of the Internet has exploded, yet we are only beginning to understand the Internet's profound political consequences. Authoritarian states are digitally catching up with their democratic counterparts, and both are showing a growing interest in the use of...
03.26.2024
Kevin P. Reihle, "The Russian FSB: A Concise History of the Federal Security Service" (Georgetown UP, 2024)
Since its founding in 1995, the FSB, Russia's Federal Security Service, has regained the majority of the domestic security functions of the Soviet-era KGB. Under Vladimir Putin, who served as FSB director just before becoming president, the agency has grown...
03.05.2024
Michael Poulshock, "Power Structures in International Politics" (Low 8, 2023)
Power Structures in International Politics (Low 8, 2023) presents an original perspective on the dynamics underlying world events, approaching international relations through the lens of computational science. It explains how states accumulate political power and how this competition leads to resource conflict,...
02.24.2024
Paul Scharre, "Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" (Norton, 2023)
An award-winning defense expert tells the story of today’s great power rivalry―the struggle to control artificial intelligence. A new industrial revolution has begun. Like mechanization or electricity before it, artificial intelligence will touch every aspect of our lives―and cause profound disruptions...
02.23.2024
The Future of the Chinese Military: A Discussion with James A. Siebens
For all the talk of China being a peaceful country with no aggressive intentions, it has behaved like most other rising powers – spending lots of money on its military. But what do we know of how that military is...
02.14.2024
How to Stage a Coup and Ten Other Lessons from the World of Secret Statecraft
Why do states engage in secret statecraft and covert action? How different are these secret and covert state activities in real world settings compared to their popular culture representations? And what effect do they have on democracy both globally and...
02.11.2024
Timothy A. Sayle, "Enduring Alliance: A History of NATO and the Postwar Global Order" (Cornell UP, 2019)
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization regularly appears in newspapers and political science scholarship. Surprisingly, historians have yet to devote the attention that the organization’s history merits. Timothy A. Sayle, an Assistant Professor of history at the University of Toronto, attempts...
02.08.2024
Wendy Cheng, "Island X: Taiwanese Student Migrants, Campus Spies, and Cold War Activism" (U Washington Press, 2023)
This episode, which is co-hosted with Tandee Wang, features a conversation with Dr. Wendy Cheng, author of Island X: Taiwanese Student Migrants, Campus Spies, and Cold War Activism. Published in November 2023 by the University of Washington Press, Island X delves into the...
02.08.2024
John Horgan, "Terrorist Minds: The Psychology of Violent Extremism from Al-Qaeda to the Far Right" ( Columbia UP, 2023)
What makes a person want to become a terrorist? Who becomes involved in terrorism, and why? In what ways does participating in violent extremism change someone? And how can people become deradicalized? John Horgan―one of the world’s leading experts on the...
02.08.2024
Florence Mok, "Covert Colonialism: Governance, Surveillance and Political Culture in British Hong Kong, c.1966-97" (Manchester UP, 2023)
Florence Mok's book Covert Colonialism: Governance, Surveillance and Political Culture in British Hong Kong, c.1966-97 (Manchester UP, 2023) is timely and exciting for those who are interested in colonial governance and autonomy of the colonial polity. This is a long-ignored area in which...
02.03.2024
Beatrice Heuser, "War: A Genealogy of Western Ideas and Practices" (Oxford UP, 2022)
War is often thought of mainly the concern of professional soldiers and maybe politicians as well. However, philosophers and theorists of varying types have addressed the issue of war in its many aspects. This is because war has numerous political,...
01.31.2024
J. Overton, "Seapower by Other Means: Naval Contributions to National Objectives Beyond Sea Control, Power Projection, and Traditional Service Missions" (Nomos, 2023)
Naval forces exist to control the seas and project power, often through the use of violence. This does not, however, include everything they have done or can do. Navies have always spent much of their time and resources engaged in...
01.30.2024
Curtis Fox, "Hybrid Warfare: The Russian Approach to Strategic Competition and Conventional Military Conflict" (30 Press Publishing, 2023)
The on-going war in Ukraine continues to highlight the distinct differences between how Russia operates large-scale military operations from the usual manner NATO military forces often engage themselves. What accounts for the Russian way of war? A common term used...
01.28.2024
Calder Walton, "Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West" (Simon & Schuster, 2024)
Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West (Simon & Schuster, 2024) is the history of the secret war that Russia and the West have been waging for a century. Espionage, sabotage, and subversion were the Kremlin's means to equalize...
01.27.2024
Paddy Walker and Peter Roberts, "War's Changed Landscape?: A Primer on Conflict's Forms and Norms" (Howgate, 2023)
Throughout much of the 21st century thus far, the common argument among military pundits was that war has or will soon be radically changed in manners that exist beyond imagination. The main catalyst for such extraordinary changes would be new...
01.14.2024
Matthew Levitt, "Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad" (Yale UP, 2008)
The world is reeling from the savage terror attack that brutalized, raped, murdered and kidnapped Israelis and civilians from at least 25 other countries, continuing to hold many of them hostage – and from the ongoing war that followed. After Hamas...
01.14.2024
Jeffrey A. Friedman, "The Commander-in-Chief Test: Public Opinion and the Politics of Image-Making in US Foreign Policy" (Cornell UP, 2023)
Americans frequently criticize US foreign policy for being overly costly and excessively militaristic. With its rising defense budgets and open-ended "forever wars," US foreign policy often appears disconnected from public opinion, reflecting the views of elites and special interests rather...
01.12.2024
Sam Lebovic, "State of Silence: The Espionage Act and the Rise of America's Secrecy Regime" (Basic Book, 2023)
In State of Silence: The Espionage Act and the Rise of America's Secrecy Regime (Basic Books, 2023), political historian Dr. Sam Lebovic uncovers the troubling history of the Espionage Act. First passed in 1917, it was initially used to punish critics of...
01.08.2024
Paul F. Diehl et al., "When Peacekeeping Missions Collide: Balancing Multiple Roles in Peace Operations" (Oxford UP, 2023)
The contemporary world is beset with a wide variety of conflicts, all of which have features without historical precedent. While most accounts of peacekeeping focus on attempts to limit violent conflict, this traditional view hardly captures the variety of challenges...
01.03.2024
Gary Shiffman, "The Economics of Violence: How Behavioral Science Can Transform our View of Crime, Insurgency, and Terrorism" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
Dr. Gary Shiffman’s book The Economics of Violence: How Behavioral Science Can Transform our View of Crime, Insurgency, and Terrorism (Cambridge UP, 2020) serves as a fantastic introduction to anyone interested in thinking critically about terrorist, insurgency, and criminal groups of all...
12.27.2023
Jeffrey Whyte, "The Birth of Psychological War: Propaganda, Espionage, and Military Violence from WWII to the Vietnam War" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Jeffrey Whyte's book The Birth of Psychological War: Propaganda, Espionage, and Military Violence from WWII to the Vietnam War (Oxford UP, 2023) explores the history, politics, and geography of United States psychological warfare in the 20th century against the backdrop of the...
12.27.2023
David T. Beito, "The New Deal's War on the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR's Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance" (Independent Institute, 2023)
The legacy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt enjoys regular acclaim from historians, politicians, and educators. Lauded for his New Deal policies, leadership as a wartime president, cozy fireside chats, and groundbreaking support of the "forgotten man," FDR, we have been...
12.26.2023
Thomas A. Schwartz, "Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography" (Hill and Wang, 2020)
Over the past six decades, Henry Kissinger has been America's most consistently praised--and reviled--public figure. He was hailed as a "miracle worker" for his peacemaking in the Middle East, pursuit of détente with the Soviet Union, negotiation of an end...
12.24.2023
Ilkay Yilmaz, "Ottoman Passports: Security and Geographic Mobility, 1876-1908" (Syracuse UP, 2023)
In Ottoman Passports: Security and Geographic Mobility, 1876-1908 (Syracuse University Press, 2023), İlkay Yılmaz reconsiders the history of two political issues, the Armenian and Macedonian questions, approaching both through the lens of mobility restrictions during the late Ottoman Empire from 1876 to 1908....
12.22.2023
Huw Bennett, "Uncivil War: The British Army and the Troubles, 1966–1975" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Huw Bennett is a Reader in International Relations at Cardiff Unviersity. He specializes in strategic studies, the history of war, and intelligence studies, and work on both historical and contemporary issues concerning the use of military power. His research focuses...
12.15.2023
Troels Burchall Henningsen, "Western Intervention and Informal Politics: Simulated Statebuilding and Failed Reforms" (Routledge, 2021)
Western Intervention and Informal Politics: Simulated Statebuilding and Failed Reforms (Routledge, 2021) by Dr. Troels Burchall Henningsen examines the political and military dynamic between threatened local regimes and Western powers, and argues that the power of informal politics forces local regimes...
12.14.2023
Louis-Alexandre Berg, "Governing Security After War: The Politics of Institutional Change in the Security Sector" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Security assistance has become the largest component of international peacebuilding and stabilisation efforts, and a primary tool for responding to civil war and insurgency. Donors and peacekeepers not only train and equip military and police forces, they also seek to...
12.12.2023
Michael W. Doyle, "Cold Peace: Avoiding the New Cold War" (Liveright, 2023)
Michael W. Doyle's book Cold Peace: Avoiding the New Cold War (Liveright, 2023) offers an urgent examination of the world barreling toward a new Cold War. By 1990, the first Cold War was ending. The Berlin Wall had fallen and the Warsaw Pact was...
12.03.2023
Robert B. Rakove, "Days of Opportunity: The United States and Afghanistan Before the Soviet Invasion" (Columbia UP, 2023)
Long before the 1979 Soviet invasion, the United States was closely concerned with Afghanistan. For much of the twentieth century, American diplomats, policy makers, businesspeople, and experts took part in the Afghan struggle to modernize, delivered vital aid, and involved...
12.01.2023
Sinae Hyun, "Indigenizing the Cold War: The Border Patrol Police and Nation-Building in Thailand" (U Hawaii Press, 2023)
Historians have tended to view the Cold War as a global ideological confrontation between an expansionist communist Soviet Union and a capitalist United States which sought to contain communism. And this confrontation was fought out by their proxies in the...
11.30.2023
On “Henry Kissinger and His World” with author Barry Gewen
In my talk with Barry Gewen on his 2020 book, The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World (W. W. Norton, 2020), we explore the disparate influences that shaped Kissinger as both an intellectual and as a practitioner of power. Our conversation touches...
11.30.2023
Russ Castronovo, "American Insecurity and the Origins of Vulnerability" (Princeton UP, 2023)
An incisive critique that examines the origins of contemporary American ideas about surveillance, terrorism, and white supremacy. For more than three centuries, Americans have pursued strategies of security that routinely make them feel vulnerable, unsafe, and insecure. American Insecurity and the Origins...
11.26.2023
Brian D. Blankenship, "The Burden-Sharing Dilemma: Coercive Diplomacy in US Alliance Politics" (Cornell UP, 2023)
The Burden-Sharing Dilemma: Coercive Diplomacy in US Alliance Politics (Cornell UP, 2023) examines the conditions under which the United States is willing and able to pressure its allies to assume more responsibility for their own defense. The United States has a mixed...
11.22.2023
Andrew Monaghan and Richard Connolly. "The Sea in Russian Strategy" (Manchester UP, 2023)
The common perception of Russia's status as a great power is often portrayed as being based largely on land power. Being the largest country in the world and fielding massively large field armies, there is some considerable truth to this...
11.21.2023
Marika Sosnowski, "Redefining Ceasefires: Wartime Order and Statebuilding in Syria" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Since 2012, ceasefires have been used in Syria to halt violence and facilitate peace agreements. However, in Redefining Ceasefires: Wartime Order and Statebuilding in Syria (Cambridge University Press, 2023), Dr. Marika Sosnowski argues that a ceasefire is rarely ever just a 'cease...
11.14.2023
The Future of World Disorder: A Discussion with Peter R. Neumann
Do confusions in the West threaten a new world disorder? It’s a question asked by Professor Peter R. Neumann of Kings College, London. He is the author of The New World Disorder: How the West is Destroying Itself (Scribe, 2024). Listen to...
11.09.2023
The Future of Crucial Materials: A Discussion with Ed Conway
Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. These fundamental materials have created empires, razed civilizations, and fed our ingenuity and greed for thousands of years. Without them, our modern world would not exist, and the battle to control them will...
11.08.2023
Malcolm D. Evans, "Tackling Torture: Prevention in Practice" (Bristol UP, 2023)
How big a problem is torture? Are the right things being done to prevent it? Why does the UN appear at times to be so impotent in the face of it? Tackling Torture: Prevention in Practice (Bristol University Press, 2023) by Malcolm...
11.07.2023
Helen Fry, "Women in Intelligence: The Hidden History of Two World Wars" (Yale UP, 2023)
From the twentieth century onward, women took on an extraordinary range of roles in intelligence, defying the conventions of their time. Across both world wars, far from being a small part of covert operations, women ran spy networks and escape...
11.06.2023
Hamas, Iran and Israel: The Perils of Overreaction
In this episode of International Horizons, Colin Clarke, director of research at the Soufan Center, discusses the possible trajectories of the Israel-Palestine conflict with RBI director John Torpey. Clarke introduces the linkages of Hamas with Iran and the way in which...
11.04.2023
Peter Layton, "Grand Strategy" (2018)
With the revival of great power competition in international relations, the term "grand strategy" has also encountered a considerable revival from its Cold War era heights of prestige. What exactly is "grand strategy" and how should policy-makers of different countries,...
11.03.2023
Eleonora Mattiacci, "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford UP, 2022)
An in-depth account of why countries' treacherous foreign policies often have harmless origins, how this predicament shapes international politics, and what to do about it. The increasing unpredictability of state behavior in recent world politics is a surprising development. The uncertainty...
10.28.2023
Norman Solomon, "War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine" (New Press, 2023)
More than twenty years ago, 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan set into motion a hugely consequential shift in America’s foreign policy: a perpetual state of war that is almost entirely invisible to the American public. War Made Invisible: How America...
10.27.2023
Nicole Nguyen, "Terrorism on Trial: Political Violence and Abolitionist Futures" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)
Rather than functioning as a final arbiter of justice, U.S. domestic courts are increasingly seen as counterterrorism tools that can incapacitate terrorists, maintain national security operations domestically, and produce certain narratives of conflict. Terrorism on Trial: Political Violence and Abolitionist Futures (University...
10.19.2023
P. W. Singer and A. Cole, "Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution" (HMH, 2020)
In P. W. Singer and August Cole's groundbreaking book, Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020), an FBI agent hunts a new kind of terrorist through a Washington, DC, of the future - at once...
10.16.2023
The Gaza War in Military-Historical Perspective
In this interview military historian Jeremy Black examines ongoing Israeli-Hamas conflict in Israel and the Gaza Strip in historical perspective. Black is the author of Insurgency Warfare: A Global History to the Present (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023). Charles Coutinho, PH. D., Associate Fellow...

What's New Books in National Security about?

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New Books in National Security episodes:

Michael De Groot, "Disruption: The Global Economic Shocks of the 1970s and the End of the Cold War" (Cornell UP, 2024)

David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts, "Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare From 1945 to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine" (Harper, 2023)

Robert D. Kaplan, "The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China" (Random House, 2023)

Jonathan W. Hackett, "Theory of Irregular War" (McFarland, 2024)

Anita R. Gohdes, "Repression in the Digital Age: Surveillance, Censorship, and the Dynamics of State Violence" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Kevin P. Reihle, "The Russian FSB: A Concise History of the Federal Security Service" (Georgetown UP, 2024)

Michael Poulshock, "Power Structures in International Politics" (Low 8, 2023)

Paul Scharre, "Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" (Norton, 2023)

The Future of the Chinese Military: A Discussion with James A. Siebens

How to Stage a Coup and Ten Other Lessons from the World of Secret Statecraft

Timothy A. Sayle, "Enduring Alliance: A History of NATO and the Postwar Global Order" (Cornell UP, 2019)

Wendy Cheng, "Island X: Taiwanese Student Migrants, Campus Spies, and Cold War Activism" (U Washington Press, 2023)

John Horgan, "Terrorist Minds: The Psychology of Violent Extremism from Al-Qaeda to the Far Right" ( Columbia UP, 2023)

Florence Mok, "Covert Colonialism: Governance, Surveillance and Political Culture in British Hong Kong, c.1966-97" (Manchester UP, 2023)

Beatrice Heuser, "War: A Genealogy of Western Ideas and Practices" (Oxford UP, 2022)

J. Overton, "Seapower by Other Means: Naval Contributions to National Objectives Beyond Sea Control, Power Projection, and Traditional Service Missions" (Nomos, 2023)

Curtis Fox, "Hybrid Warfare: The Russian Approach to Strategic Competition and Conventional Military Conflict" (30 Press Publishing, 2023)

Calder Walton, "Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West" (Simon & Schuster, 2024)

Paddy Walker and Peter Roberts, "War's Changed Landscape?: A Primer on Conflict's Forms and Norms" (Howgate, 2023)

Matthew Levitt, "Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad" (Yale UP, 2008)

Jeffrey A. Friedman, "The Commander-in-Chief Test: Public Opinion and the Politics of Image-Making in US Foreign Policy" (Cornell UP, 2023)

Sam Lebovic, "State of Silence: The Espionage Act and the Rise of America's Secrecy Regime" (Basic Book, 2023)

Paul F. Diehl et al., "When Peacekeeping Missions Collide: Balancing Multiple Roles in Peace Operations" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Gary Shiffman, "The Economics of Violence: How Behavioral Science Can Transform our View of Crime, Insurgency, and Terrorism" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

Jeffrey Whyte, "The Birth of Psychological War: Propaganda, Espionage, and Military Violence from WWII to the Vietnam War" (Oxford UP, 2023)

David T. Beito, "The New Deal's War on the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR's Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance" (Independent Institute, 2023)

Thomas A. Schwartz, "Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography" (Hill and Wang, 2020)

Ilkay Yilmaz, "Ottoman Passports: Security and Geographic Mobility, 1876-1908" (Syracuse UP, 2023)

Huw Bennett, "Uncivil War: The British Army and the Troubles, 1966–1975" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

Troels Burchall Henningsen, "Western Intervention and Informal Politics: Simulated Statebuilding and Failed Reforms" (Routledge, 2021)

Louis-Alexandre Berg, "Governing Security After War: The Politics of Institutional Change in the Security Sector" (Oxford UP, 2022)

Michael W. Doyle, "Cold Peace: Avoiding the New Cold War" (Liveright, 2023)

Robert B. Rakove, "Days of Opportunity: The United States and Afghanistan Before the Soviet Invasion" (Columbia UP, 2023)

Sinae Hyun, "Indigenizing the Cold War: The Border Patrol Police and Nation-Building in Thailand" (U Hawaii Press, 2023)

On “Henry Kissinger and His World” with author Barry Gewen

Russ Castronovo, "American Insecurity and the Origins of Vulnerability" (Princeton UP, 2023)

Brian D. Blankenship, "The Burden-Sharing Dilemma: Coercive Diplomacy in US Alliance Politics" (Cornell UP, 2023)

Andrew Monaghan and Richard Connolly. "The Sea in Russian Strategy" (Manchester UP, 2023)

Marika Sosnowski, "Redefining Ceasefires: Wartime Order and Statebuilding in Syria" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

The Future of World Disorder: A Discussion with Peter R. Neumann

The Future of Crucial Materials: A Discussion with Ed Conway

Malcolm D. Evans, "Tackling Torture: Prevention in Practice" (Bristol UP, 2023)

Helen Fry, "Women in Intelligence: The Hidden History of Two World Wars" (Yale UP, 2023)

Hamas, Iran and Israel: The Perils of Overreaction

Peter Layton, "Grand Strategy" (2018)

Eleonora Mattiacci, "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford UP, 2022)

Norman Solomon, "War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine" (New Press, 2023)

Nicole Nguyen, "Terrorism on Trial: Political Violence and Abolitionist Futures" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

P. W. Singer and A. Cole, "Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution" (HMH, 2020)

The Gaza War in Military-Historical Perspective