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Joseph Nye's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Joseph Nye recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Joseph Nye's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1

Power

A Radical View

The second edition of this seminal work includes the original text, first published in 1974, alongside two major new chapters. Power: A Radical View assesses the main debates about how to conceptualize and study power, including the influential contributions of Michel Foucault. Power Revisited reconsiders Steven Lukes' own views in light of these debates and of criticisms of his original argument.

With a new introduction and bibliographical essay, this book has consolidated its reputation as a classic work and a major reference point within Social and Political Theory. It...
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Recommended by Joseph Nye, and 1 others.

Joseph NyeHe wrote his book on radical views of power in the 1970s, following a tradition of people writing that power was the ability to get others to do what they otherwise wouldn’t do. It gave the image of twisting arms, using coercion to get people to do things. This was a famous definition of power, developed by the Yale political scientist Robert Dahl in the 1960s. Dahl basically set a trend of how... (Source)

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2
The former editor in chief of the Economist returns to the territory of his best-selling book The Sun Also Sets to lay out an entirely fresh analysis of the growing rivalry between China, India, and Japan and what it will mean for America, the global economy, and the twenty-first-century world. Though books such as The World Is Flat and China Shakes the World consider them only as individual actors, Emmott argues that these three political and economic giants are closely intertwined by their fierce competition for influence, markets, resources, and strategic... more
Recommended by Joseph Nye, and 1 others.

Joseph NyeYes, Rivals. Emmott notes that as we look at the rise of China, and the question of whether China will present the kind of challenge to the US that Athens did to Sparta or Germany did to Britain in the 20th century, we have to ask whether fear of the rise of China in the US will create that kind of reaction in the 21st century. (Source)

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3

The Landmark Thucydides

A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War

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)

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4

The Post-American World

"This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else." So begins Fareed Zakaria's important new work on the era we are now entering.

Following on the success of his best-selling The Future of Freedom, Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the "rise of the rest"—the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others—as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world.
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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)

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5
Author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Against All Enemies, former presidential advisor and counter-terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke sounds a timely and chilling warning about America’s vulnerability in a terrifying new international conflict—Cyber War! Every concerned American should read this startling and explosive book that offers an insider’s view of White House ‘Situation Room’ operations and carries the reader to the frontlines of our cyber defense. Cyber War exposes a virulent threat to our nation’s security. This is no X-Files... more

Joseph NyeThis is intriguing, because when you look at the enormous opportunities that the Internet has presented – economic efficiency, great communication – we generally think of the positive side. But what Clarke and Knake point out is that as we open these opportunities we also make ourselves vulnerable to their disruption. For example, you have the capacity to do damage in the physical world just by... (Source)

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