Gideon Rose's Top Book Recommendations

Gideon RoseIn Fareed Zakaria’s book, the final chapter is on the United States. He points out that the greatest threat to the United States in the current world, and the world we’re heading into, lies not outside, but inside, in the failure of good fiscal management, in a failure to have effective and responsible political institutions to deal with America’s challenges. Michael Mandelbaum’s book, which is... (Source)

Gideon RoseStanley Hoffman was also one of my advisers [at Harvard]. His book is the best treatment of the dilemmas you face if you actually try to put your ideals into practice in the world. It’s a survey of various different issues – human rights, international justice, compassionate and fair economic policy and development. In exploring these issues, he says, “OK, in a world such as it is, what can be... (Source)

Gideon RoseHaving described the international system and the world of foreign policy in which states have to operate, the next thing to understand is the particular actor that is the United States. What is it that makes this actor’s behaviour distinctive? The best book I know on that topic is by one of my [PhD] advisers [at Harvard], Samuel Huntington, now unfortunately deceased. The essence of Huntington’s... (Source)

Robert ServiceIt was the trauma of Thucydides’ lifetime and in the book he sought to explain why the war had gone on so long and why Athens lost it. (Source)

Joseph Nyewhen Thucydides is trying to account for the Peloponnesian War, an extraordinary war in the fifth century BC in which the Greek city-state system tore itself apart, he says the basic cause of the war was the rise in power of Athens and the fear that created in Sparta. He points out that when there is this kind of fear, and there is a belief that war is inevitable, it can itself become a cause of... (Source)

Gideon RoseThucydides is the single best treatment of international relations, foreign policy and military affairs that exists. It is the best description of what life in a multipolar world is like, what politics and war are like for the units involved, of the basic realities of international relations. It has no single line. (Source)

Barack ObamaFact or fiction, the president knows that reading keeps the mind sharp. He also delved into these non-fiction reads: Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Evan Osnos Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman Moral Man And Immoral Society, Reinhold Niebuhr A Kind And Just Parent, William Ayers The Post-American World, Fareed Zakaria Lessons in Disaster, Gordon Goldstein Sapiens: A Brief History of... (Source)

Bill Gates[On Bill Gates's reading list in 2012.] (Source)

David MarquandZakaria is Indian by origin and he went to America in his youth. He is now a very prominent journalist in America. His thesis is that America, while still being a superpower, has got to contend with the rise of other countries. It can no longer call the shots in the new world that is developing. This is not a new thesis, but he puts it forward very powerfully and very well. He also looks at the... (Source)