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After the Apocalypse
- America's Role in a World Transformed
- Narrated by: Peter Coyote
- Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins
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Publisher's summary
A bold and urgent perspective on how American foreign policy must change in response to the shifting world order of the 21st century, from Andrew J. Bacevich, the New York Times best-selling author of The Limits of Power and The Age of Illusions.
The purpose of US foreign policy has, at least theoretically, been to keep Americans safe. Yet as we confront a radically changed world, it has become indisputably clear that the terms of that policy have failed. Washington’s insistence that a market economy is compatible with the common good, its faith in the idea of the “West” and its “special relationships”, its conviction that global military primacy is the key to a stable and sustainable world order - these have brought endless wars and a succession of moral and material disasters.
In a bold reconception of America’s place in the world, informed by thinking from across the political spectrum, Andrew J. Bacevich - founder and president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a bipartisan Washington think tank dedicated to foreign policy - lays down a new approach - one that is based on moral pragmatism, mutual coexistence, and war as a last resort. Confronting the threats of the future - accelerating climate change, a shift in the international balance of power, and the ascendance of information technology over brute weapons of war - his vision calls for nothing less than a profound overhaul of our understanding of national security.
Crucial and provocative, After the Apocalypse sets out new principles to guide the once-but-no-longer sole superpower as it navigates a transformed world.
A Macmillan Audio production from Metropolitan Books
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Critic reviews
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"An excoriating call for change...Bacevich's arguments are well-informed and stoked by a sense of moral outrage. Readers will agree that US foreign policy needs a massive rethink." (Publishers Weekly)
"With a reputation for knowledgeable, incisive, and provocative readings of history, Bacevich delivers his latest addition to a growing body of thought-provoking work.... Broad in its scope yet concise, this is an important nonconformist interpretation of American history." (Kirkus Reviews)
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- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Recent years have brought deeply disturbing developments around the globe. American sentiment seems to be leaning increasingly toward withdrawal in the face of such disarray. In this powerful, urgent essay, Robert Kagan elucidates the reasons why American withdrawal would be the worst possible response, based as it is on a fundamental and dangerous misreading of the world. Like a jungle that keeps growing back after being cut down, the world has always been full of dangerous actors who, left unchecked, possess the desire and ability to make things worse.
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Out of date: covid, Trump nobel nominations etc
- By David on 11-13-18
By: Robert Kagan
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Of Paradise and Power
- America and Europe in the New World Order
- By: Robert Kagan
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 2 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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When historians want to find out about the ideas that motivated American foreign policy in the early years of the twenty-first century, they would do well to read this book. Robert Kagan has formally set out a case for unilateralism on the part of the United States, as opposed to the multilateralism now characteristic of Europe. Kagan believes that the United States can disregard a weak Europe, and have a free hand in pursuing its global interests.
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Quick and pithy listen
- By Erik Fosshage on 01-14-04
By: Robert Kagan
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The Return of Marco Polo's World
- War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-First Century
- By: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on decades of firsthand experience as a foreign correspondent and military embed for The Atlantic, as well as encounters with preeminent realist thinkers, Kaplan outlines the timeless principles that should shape America's role in a turbulent world: a respect for the limits of Western-style democracy; a delineation between American interests and American values; an awareness of the psychological toll of warfare; a projection of power via a strong navy; and more.
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Essays on the Region of the Silk Road
- By Jeff Beardsley on 05-19-18
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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The Light That Failed
- Why the West Is Losing the Fight for Democracy
- By: Ivan Krastev, Stephen Holmes
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Why did the West, after winning the Cold War, lose its political balance? In the early 1990s, hopes for the eastward spread of liberal democracy were high. And yet the transformation of Eastern European countries gave rise to a bitter repudiation of liberalism itself, not only there but also back in the heartland of the West. In this brilliant work of political history, Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes argue that the supposed end of Communism turned out to be only the beginning of the age of the autocrat.
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Great text
- By Safronov on 05-03-21
By: Ivan Krastev, and others
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Democracy Incorporated
- Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism
- By: Sheldon S. Wolin
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable: has America unwittingly morphed into a new and strange kind of political hybrid, one where economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled? Can the nation check its descent into what the author terms "inverted totalitarianism"? Wolin portrays a country where citizens are politically uninterested and submissive - and where elites are eager to keep them that way.
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Essential listening....
- By M. Levine on 02-25-11
By: Sheldon S. Wolin
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When the Facts Change
- Essays, 1995-2010
- By: Tony Judt
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
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In When the Facts Change, Tony Judt's widow and fellow historian Jennifer Homans has assembled an essential collection of the most important and influential pieces written in the last 15 years of Judt's life, the years in which he found his voice in the public sphere. Included are seminal essays on the full range of Judt's concerns, including Europe as an idea and in reality, before 1989 and thereafter; Israel, the Holocaust and the Jews; American hyperpower and the world after 9/11.
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Essential
- By Herman Utik on 09-19-16
By: Tony Judt
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World Order
- By: Henry Kissinger
- Narrated by: Nicholas Hormann
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Henry Kissinger offers in World Order a deep meditation on the roots of international harmony and global disorder. Drawing on his experience as one of the foremost statesmen of the modern era Kissinger now reveals his analysis of the ultimate challenge for the 21st century: How to build a shared international order in a world of divergent historical perspectives, violent conflict, proliferating technology, and ideological extremism.
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More retrospective than future oriented
- By Scott on 10-23-14
By: Henry Kissinger
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American Rule
- How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People
- By: Jared Yates Sexton
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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In American Rule, Jared Yates Sexton upends those convenient fictions by laying bare the foundational myths at the heart of our collective American imagination. From the very origins of this nation, Americans in power have abused and subjugated others; enabling that corruption are the many myths of American exceptionalism and steadfast values, which are fed to the public and repeated across generations.
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Truth
- By Laurie on 09-28-20
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The Hundred Years' War on Palestine
- A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917--2017
- By: Rashid Khalidi
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi, Rashid Khalidi - introduction
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members - mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists - The Hundred Years' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age.
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Thoroughly Researched and Evidence-Based, but...
- By K on 05-24-21
By: Rashid Khalidi
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Hegemony or Survival
- America's Quest for Global Dominance
- By: Noam Chomsky
- Narrated by: Brian Jones, Noam Chomsky
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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For more than half a century, the United States has been pursuing a grand imperial strategy with the aim of staking out the globe. Our leaders have shown themselves willing, as in the Cuban missile crisis, to follow the dream of dominance no matter how high the risks. Now the Bush administration is intensifying this process, driving us toward the final frontiers of imperial control, toward a choice between the prerogatives of power and a livable Earth.
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Read and open your mind
- By Rupert on 01-15-04
By: Noam Chomsky
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China’s Good War
- How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism
- By: Rana Mitter
- Narrated by: Dennis Kleinman
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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For most of its history, the People’s Republic of China limited public discussion of the war against Japan. It was an experience of victimization - and one that saw Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek fighting for the same goals. But now, as China grows more powerful, the meaning of the war is changing. Rana Mitter argues that China’s reassessment of the World War II years is central to its newfound confidence abroad and to mounting nationalism at home.
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Scholarly work
- By Kindle Customer on 09-12-23
By: Rana Mitter
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Except for Palestine
- The Limits of Progressive Politics
- By: Marc Lamont Hill, Mitchell Plitnick
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In this major work of daring criticism and analysis, scholar and political commentator Marc Lamont Hill and Israel-Palestine expert Mitchell Plitnick spotlight how holding fast to one-sided and unwaveringly pro-Israel policies reflects the truth-bending grip of authoritarianism on both Israel and the United States.
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Excellent Look Into Right Now
- By n.o. on 10-28-23
By: Marc Lamont Hill, and others
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Interventions
- By: Noam Chomsky
- Narrated by: Peter Johnson
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Interventions, by Noam Chomsky, is getting new press after the Pentagon banned the book from Guantanamo Bay's prison library. Interventions is Noam Chomsky at his best. Not since his all-time best-selling title, 9/11, published in the Open Media series in 2001, have readers and listeners had a timely, short, affordable Chomsky. Unlike 9/11, Interventions is a writerly work - a series of more than 30 tightly argued essays aimed at various aspects of U.S. power and politics in the post-9/11 world. While critical of U.S. military interventions around the globe, each piece in the book is in itself an intellectual intervention.
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Chomsky on Fire
- By Susie on 01-09-13
By: Noam Chomsky
What listeners say about After the Apocalypse
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- Tom Millan
- 07-01-21
Very negative but with merit.
This is third book I’ve purchased by Andrew Bacevich. I admire with military and geopolitical knowledge as one of the best. In this book he is seemingly biter regarding the historical events of the US and it’s leadership. Informing but strong opinions by the author are apparent. The narrator should stick with Ken Burns documentaries. His voice is just too authoritative.
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- James
- 09-08-21
Citizens, Take Heed
Mr Bacevich addresses our problems directly, and honestly. Probably why he is not in our current political arena. This book is a wake up call to Americans who care about our future and the future of our grandchildren. Right now this country is bifurcated and disjointed - so much so, we can't even come to a logical and reasonable agreement on getting vaccinated against COVID-19. Having experienced the good times and the bad times of the US over my 78 years, this is the worst state I have seen the country in. Things need to change in a big way, and hopefully sooner rather than later.
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- Stone Island Jazz
- 06-16-21
Realistic and sobering assessment of where the USA
It is hard to accuse Andrew Bacevich for the lack of patriotism and the love for his country. Career military himself, Vietnam vet whose son also paid with his life while serving in Iraq. So when he offers an opinion, people should take it seriously. USA is on the wrong track misguided by self delusion of grandeur and exceptionalism. Focused on the wrong things and chasing the wrong objectives. Bacevich is trying to lift that veil and offer an alternative vision. Will his advice be heeded? Time will tell but things do not look promising at the moment. Madness continues....
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- Donald Harvey Marks
- 06-05-22
interesting foreign policy book
I enjoyed reading this book, which examined recent American history, our foreign policy goals, our national self-concepts and where they have faults. And made some recommendations for future changes.
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- Roger Domagalski
- 06-29-21
Required reading.
With the exception of the subject of 9/11, where the author merely repeats the impossible and discredited official account, I found his analysis of the USA’s problems to be spot on. I lived in the States for 36 years (from 1956 to 1992) a period that covered the USA’s steady decline from post-war superpower to a failing state run by corporations with a smarmy drug dealer from Arkansas as puppet president. Interestingly enough, the country’s interconnected failures were harder to see when I actually lived there, i.e. I was too close to the forest. It took moving back to Europe to enable me to see the trees more clearly. In this short but powerful book the author demonstrates his talent for seeing the pattern and its integral parts. This book should be read by every American. Not just read, but publicly discussed, analyzed, debated, and understood. However, I don’t expect it will be. The message is too painful for a people brought up with nonstop propaganda regarding the USA’s “greatness.” The US empire will therefore continue to decline, thrashing about like a wounded beast with its military (what else does it have?), and go the way of all empires, serving as an example for future historians of how a country chose to destroy itself with negligence, decadence, drugs, and mind boggling social experiments instead of doing the work it would take the be truly great.
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- marwalk
- 05-23-22
Full of chronicled opportunities lost
The Apocalypse this book refers to is the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, which upended several previously sacrosanct presuppositions about economics, society, and diplomacy. Andrew Bacevich addresses the history and condition of the United States and the role the US is likely to play in the 2020s and beyond. The author argues that the age of American empire is over—and that that's not a bad thing for the world, and especially the US. This book should help Americans discover that there is (good) life after learning that the world is not all about them.
Bacevich gores favorite oxes of both right and left—no matter who you are, you're likely to cheer some of the points made and find yourself re-evaluating others. The neoconservative insistence on prosecuting the Iraq war receives special skewering—Bacevich traces a common thread of this mindset with the excesses of philosophical assumptions throughout the past 100 years. The obstinate positions of the Best and Brightest and other wise men throughout this period played major roles in getting us where we are today—that is, far from the best of places we could have been. This book is full of chronicled opportunities lost.
In an artful expose of Frank Capra’s Why We Fight series of motivational propaganda films in the 1940s, Bacevich highlights the clever hypocrisy presented to entice African Americans to support a war defending a democracy in which Jim Crow restricted their participation. That sold for WWII—much less so in the Vietnam era.
Major media, especially the New York Times and Washington Post as societal influencers, are also called out for criticism about their hypocrisy. The Times for example in the 1990s celebrated the US in a "we are number one" manner—while later declaring in the 1619 project that the US democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. As such candor is necessary and refreshing (Americans, eat your historical spinach), the contradictory complexity of US history indicates that the truth is likely somewhere between the noble universal humanity of the Declaration of Independence and Jefferson's own ethnic chauvinism in his regression away from striving for racial and cultural liberalism in his later life.
Even as this book was written prior to the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine, Bacevich leaves open the question of whether America's leadership (its ruling elites) can reform themselves (and the US) to establish a survivable direction. Whether America will re-calibrate its many erroneous readings and keep authoritarians (foreign and domestic) and its own advancing illiberalism safely contained remains unanswered—we must do all we can to influence the influencers to stay the (corrected) course and establish true justice for all.
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- AJbGiant
- 06-14-21
Apocalypse Today
Bacevich has been one of the few historians who looked at the GWOT with open eyes in the last twenty years. He’s done this again in his latest book, but now he’s predicting our future. The failed wars made by dumb generals and politicians, along with their partisan voters, have been part of a bigger illness Americans suffer from. Our exceptionalism in war and empire have dug our own graves.
Bacevich has provided a alternative future without our exceptionalism if we have the courage. The chapters on race and the environment are excellent. There’s a soundness and modesty in his thought that you can’t find within the empty two party tent. Good narration by Peter Coyote, too.
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- Betsy Fowler
- 01-03-22
Clear-headed critique of US policy pre-and post-pandemic
Historian Andrew Bacevich torpedoes all claims of American exceptionalism and dismantles the myths we have foolishly believed about our history and leadership, at home and abroad, since the USA was founded. He then offers a way out of this quagmire, in the unlikely event we ever come to our senses. Well read by Peter Coyote (though not quite up to his usual high standards).
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- George Reid
- 10-22-21
A screed he promised, a screed he gave
One thing about this book, there is something for everyone to love and something to hate.
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2 people found this helpful