Gideon Rachman's Book Recommendations (Updated for 2026)

1

Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

Ezra F. Vogel

4.5

No one in the twentieth century had a greater impact on world history than Deng Xiaoping. And no scholar is better qualified than Ezra Vogel to disentangle the contradictions embodied in the life and legacy of China's boldest strategist--the pragmatic, disciplined force behind China's radical economic, technological, and social transformation.

Recommended by Bill Gates and Gideon Rachman.

Gideon Rachman

This is the best and most comprehensive book I know, certainly in English, on the Deng Xiaoping era. Deng’s importance will only grow with the passage of time. I think he will emerge as a truly historic figure – less dramatic than Mao, but with more lasting impact if China remains on this course. There was a need for a really serious and readable study of him, and this is a big door-stopping book but a pleasure to read. The author has an eye for anecdote, and I am surprised at how much is known about private conversations at the top of the Communist party. My assumption had been that this was a secret society that didn’t keep records, and we wouldn’t have any clue. [source]

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

If you’re going to read one book about modern China in the period after Mao, then this is the book you should read. [source]

Cover unavailable

2

Delors: Inside the House That Jacques Built

Charles Grant

4.6

This biography is a study of Jacques Delors and his family background, his struggles and ideas, his setbacks and achievements against the turbulent background of the European movement and the growth of the EC. Since 1985, when Jacques Delors became President of the European Commission, no politician made a bigger impact on Western Europe. Delors's vigour and determination revived a moribund Europe

Recommended by Gideon Rachman.

Gideon Rachman

Choosing a book about Delors is perhaps not a very obvious way of talking about a period when dramatic things were happening in Europe. But taking a step back, why is Europe part of this story of globalisation? Firstly, the fall of the Berlin wall meant that the Soviet alternative to the Western system collapsed. But also because the formation of the European Union was a mini globalisation in itself. It constructed a European single market and a single currency, which broke down barriers between countries in an economic sense, and with an explicit political agenda behind it. So in Europe they were much more conscious of the political implications of what they were doing economically. In a sense that was the point. There’s a good quote in the book, where Delors, working on the single market with Thatcher, said on French radio that he was making a single market, but what he was really there to build was a political union – which was anathema to Thatcher. He was a very contemporary figure in the sense that he got markets. If you look at his significance within France, it was to reverse the socialist excesses of the first two years of the Mitterand years. So in a French context he was an economic liberal, but he was an internationalist in the sense that he understood the rest of the world in a way that believers in French exceptionalism did not. If the market was the theme of this period, Delors absolutely got that, both in France and in Brussels. He was both a visionary and a tactician, and that’s what makes him such a powerful figure. He had a very clear vision of what he wanted Europe to become, but he was also a brilliant tactician able to make alliances with people who were different, like Margaret Thatcher. And then when the Berlin wall came down he formed a whole new set of alliances with Helmut Kohl. Thatcher went off on her own trajectory, but Delors was able to remain at the centre of those creating the new post Cold War Europe. [source]

Cover unavailable

3

America Between the Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11; The Misunderstood Years Between the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Start of the War on Terror

Derek Chollet

4.0

On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall collapsed, taking the Cold War down with it. The next twelve years passed in a haze of self-congratulation, Republican confusion, and angst, and economic prosperity—until they ended abruptly with a stunning catastrophe on September 11, 2001.In America Between The Wars, Derek Chollet and James Goldgeier blend deep expertise with broad access to both parties' pol

Recommended by Gideon Rachman.

Gideon Rachman

The two wars it defines are the Cold War and the War on Terror. Neither of them are traditional hot wars. So it’s 1989 to 2001. [source]

4

A Journey: My Political Life

Tony Blair

3.7

In this remarkably gripping memoir, one of the most dynamic and controversial leaders of modern times gives us a firsthand account of his years in office and beyond.

Here, for the first time, Tony Blair recounts his role in shaping our recent history, from the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death to the war on terror. With rare honesty and courage, he recounts the belief in ethical intervention that

Recommended by Gideon Rachman.

Gideon Rachman

Blair is an interesting figure. He’s a bit of a chameleon, and he spanned two periods. First, the period of huge faith in globalisation – the pre 9/11 optimistic period, capitalism and the third way, which he jointly developed. Then he outlasted Clinton, and became George W Bush’s great ally in the War on Terror – the much darker American world view that followed 9/11. He tried to span both and fit them into a common conceptual framework. And he is important when it comes to the global market, and the tension between globalisation and the state. [source]

5

The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism

Andrew Bacevich

4.2

From an acclaimed conservative historian and former military officer, a bracing call for a pragmatic confrontation with the nation's problems

The Limits of Power identifies a profound triple crisis facing America: the economy, in remarkable disarray, can no longer be fixed by relying on expansion abroad; the government, transformed by an imperial presidency, is a democracy in form only; U.S. involv

Recommended by Gideon Rachman.

Gideon Rachman

This is the post-Iraq disillusionment times. It’s a very slim book, and it’s quite an angry book. Bacevich is an interesting figure. He’s a foreign policy academic who has broken with the conventional Washington establishment view about the use of American power and the basically beneficial aspects of the American military might – the consensus view that both Clinton and Bush would have embraced, even if they might have disagreed over when to use that power. I hesitate to compare him to Chomsky, because I like Bacevich and I’m not Chomsky’s biggest fan, but he’s a thinking man’s Chomsky, if you like. [source]