We are entering a new era of global cataclysm in which the world faces a deadly mix of war, climate change, great power rivalry, rapid technological advancement, the end of both monarchy and empire, and countless other dangers. In Waste Land, Robert D. Kaplan, geopolitical expert and author of more than twenty books on world affairs, incisively explains how we got here and where we are going.

The Russo-Ukraine War is a vital learning opportunity for military strategists across the globe. The first and clearest lesson to be gleaned from it is this: the soundness of a military's strategy and the nimbleness with which it can adapt to unforeseen circumstances are the two most important factors in deciding victory or defeat. The War for Ukraine analyzes the war through these twin lenses of strategy and adaptation, detailing how each army has succeeded or failed to plan for and adapt to this twenty-first century war.

The national identity has been forged in the furnace of war. From the medieval kingdom of Rus battling against a Scandinavian princes and Mongol emperors, to its own empire-building conflicts in 19th-century Asia, to the formative wars of the 20th century which saw Russia pitch from Tsarist empire to communist state and defender against Nazism, all these conflicts stained the lands of Russia red with blood. A weak post-Cold War Russia then turned to Putin, who created a new mood for martial triumphalism which led directly to the Ukrainian war.

The Baltic's time has come. It is not only critical to Europe's security and increasingly a centre of political and military power in its own right; it is a reservoir of ideas and experiences that could shape the continent's future. This books explores the history, their culture, their peculiarities and national dilemmas of all nine Baltic countries. At its core is a search for fresh answers to Europe's problems, at a point where the continent's previously dominant powers appear tired and divided.

Prophecies that the dollar will lose its status as the world's dominant currency have echoed for decades—and are increasing in volume. Cryptocurrency enthusiasts claim that Bitcoin or other blockchain-based monetary units will replace the dollar. Foreign policy hawks warn that China's renminbi poses a lethal threat to the greenback. And sound money zealots predict that mounting US debt and inflation will surely erode the dollar's value to the point of irrelevancy.

When the bloody Chinese Civil War concluded in 1949, two Chinas were born. Mao’s Communists won and took China’s mainland; Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists fled to Taiwan island. Since then, China and Taiwan have drifted into being separate political and cultural entities. Taiwan is now a flourishing democracy and an economic success story: just one of its companies produces over 90 per cent of the semiconductors that power the world’s economy. It is a free and vibrant society.

William Shakespeare understood power: what it is, how it works, how it is gained, and how it is lost. In The Hollow Crown, Eliot A. Cohen reveals how the battling princes of Henry IV and scheming senators of Julius Caesar can teach us to better understand power and politics today. The White House, after all, is a court—with intrigue and conflict rivaling those on the Globe's stage—as is an army, a business, or a university. And each court is full of driven characters, in all their ambition, cruelty, and humanity.

Keith Lowe has chronicled the end of WWII in Europe in Savage Continent and the war's aftermath in The Fear and the Freedom. In Naples 1944, he brings listeners another chronicle of the terrible and often unexpected consequences of war. Even before the fall of Mussolini, Naples was a place of great contrasts filled with palaces and slums, beloved cuisine and widespread hunger. After the Allied liberation, these contrasts made the city notorious. Compared to the starving population, Allied soldiers were staggeringly wealthy.

Steven R. Ward provides an accessible overview of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) and its focus on tracking and countering domestic dissent and perceived foreign-inspired sedition. The ministry's checkered record of effective intelligence operations includes a history of assassinations and human rights abuses. Developing a clearer picture of the MOIS is important for understanding how the Islamic Republic of Iran operates, seeks security, and competes with its adversaries.

Credit Suisse was a 166-year-old bastion of global banking. But a veneer of high-class service disguised a darker, much dirtier reality. From its sterile Zurich headquarters, Credit Suisse banked dictators and drug dealers, hid stolen Nazi gold, and helped corrupt bankers fleece the firm's own clients of billions of dollars. Its top executives oversaw a global operation that laundered money for autocrats; they hired spies to track one another through the cobbled streets of the Swiss financial capital; and they helped clients hide their money from the world's tax authorities.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, the first comprehensive history of the Western Hemisphere, a sweeping five-century narrative of North and South America that redefines our understanding of both.

In 1664, England decided to invade the Dutch-controlled city of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. Charles II and his brother, the Duke of York, had dreams of empire, and their archrivals, the Dutch, were in the way. But Richard Nicolls, the military officer who led the English flotilla bent on destruction, changed his strategy once he encountered Peter Stuyvesant, New Netherland’s canny director general.

From the darkness of a plagued and war-torn Middle Ages, the Renaissance (we’re told) heralds the dawning of a new world—a halcyon age of art, prosperity, and rebirth. Hogwash! or so says award-winning novelist and historian Ada Palmer. In Inventing the Renaissance, Palmer turns her witty and irreverent eye on the fantasies we’ve told ourselves about Europe’s not-so-golden age, myths she sets right with sharp clarity.

Why have so many Americans turned against democracy? In this deeply reported book, Katherine Stewart takes us to conferences of conspiracy-mongers, backroom strategy gatherings, and services at extremist churches, and profiles the people who want to tear it all down.

Although the fundamental nature of war has not altered over the centuries, constant change, innovation, and adaptation have repeatedly reshaped how wars are fought in the West. Revolutions in military practice cannot be separated from larger social developments in areas like logistics, finance and economics, and the culture of military organizations.

How will the United States and China evolve militarily in the years ahead? Many experts believe the answer to this question is largely unknowable. But Zack Cooper argues that the American and Chinese militaries are following a well-trodden path. For centuries, the world's most powerful militaries have adhered to a remarkably consistent pattern of behavior, determined largely by their leaders' perceptions of relative power shifts. By uncovering these trends, this book places the evolving military competition between the United States and China in historical context.

The United States is entering an era of great-power competition with China and Russia. Such global struggles happen in a geopolitical twilight, between the sunshine of peace and the darkness of war. In this innovative and illuminating book, Hal Brands, a leading historian and former Pentagon adviser, argues that America should look to the history of the Cold War for lessons in how to succeed in great-power rivalry today.

We are entering a new era of global cataclysm in which the world faces a deadly mix of war, climate change, great power rivalry, rapid technological advancement, the end of both monarchy and empire, and countless other dangers. In Waste Land, Robert D. Kaplan, geopolitical expert and author of more than twenty books on world affairs, incisively explains how we got here and where we are going.

The national identity has been forged in the furnace of war. From the medieval kingdom of Rus battling against a Scandinavian princes and Mongol emperors, to its own empire-building conflicts in 19th-century Asia, to the formative wars of the 20th century which saw Russia pitch from Tsarist empire to communist state and defender against Nazism, all these conflicts stained the lands of Russia red with blood. A weak post-Cold War Russia then turned to Putin, who created a new mood for martial triumphalism which led directly to the Ukrainian war.

It used to be that ravaging another country’s economy required blockading its ports and laying siege to its cities. Now all it takes is a statement posted online by the U.S. government. In Chokepoints, Edward Fishman, a former top State Department sanctions official, takes us deep into the back rooms of power to reveal the untold history of the last two decades of U.S. foreign policy, in which America renounced the gospel of globalization and waged a new kind of economic war.

When the bloody Chinese Civil War concluded in 1949, two Chinas were born. Mao’s Communists won and took China’s mainland; Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists fled to Taiwan island. Since then, China and Taiwan have drifted into being separate political and cultural entities. Taiwan is now a flourishing democracy and an economic success story: just one of its companies produces over 90 per cent of the semiconductors that power the world’s economy. It is a free and vibrant society.

An economic and military superpower with twenty percent of the world's population, China has the wherewithal to transform the international system. Xi Jinping's bold calls for China to "lead in the reform of the global governance system" suggest that he has just such an ambition. But how does he plan to realize it? And what does it mean for the rest of the world? In this compelling book, Elizabeth Economy reveals China's ambitious new strategy to reclaim the country's past glory and reshape the geostrategic landscape in dramatic new ways.

Where do human societies come from? The drive to answer this question took on a new urgency in the nineteenth century, when a generation of archaeologists began to look beyond the bible for the origins of different cultures and civilizations. Zelia Nuttall threw herself into the study of Aztec customs and cosmology, eager to use the tools of the emerging science of anthropology to prove that modern Mexico was built over the ruins of ancient civilizations.

The air conditioner is often hailed as one of the modern world's greatest inventions—yet nearly as often blamed for global disaster. It has changed everything from architecture to people's food habits; saved countless lives, and caused countless deaths. First appearing in 1902, when Willis Carrier, an engineer barely out of college, developed the "Apparatus for Treating Air," everyone assumed it would instantly change the world. But the story of air conditioning and its rise to ubiquity is far from simple.

The founding fathers of the United States created a unique institution, the presidency, as they were determined to authorize an effective chief executive but wary of monarchy. They endowed this office with broad prerogatives and power but hedged it in with limitations. The presidency that developed over the next generation, however, was fashioned less by the clauses in the Constitution than by the way that the first presidents responded to challenges such as sectional enmity and the vexing Napoleonic warfare that jeopardized maritime rights.

The Russo-Ukraine War is a vital learning opportunity for military strategists across the globe. The first and clearest lesson to be gleaned from it is this: the soundness of a military's strategy and the nimbleness with which it can adapt to unforeseen circumstances are the two most important factors in deciding victory or defeat. The War for Ukraine analyzes the war through these twin lenses of strategy and adaptation, detailing how each army has succeeded or failed to plan for and adapt to this twenty-first century war.

Xi Jinping rules over 1.4 billion people and the second biggest economy on earth. He commands huge armed forces and runs a technology programme meant to dominate the globe. His ambition is to take the place of the United States and to change the world order. Xi's life story is full of drama: plots, purges, murders, a power struggle and a pandemic. The book, based on new sources, leads the listener from the poor, isolated China of the 1950s to the modern economic and military juggernaut of today.

All golden ages are marked by periods of spectacular cultural flourishing, scientific exploration, technological achievement and economic growth; yet no two are the same. Their beliefs, societies and place in the wider world all vary. Despite this, all previous golden ages have ended, whether it be because of external pressures or internal fracturing; too much hubris or too little wariness.

In On Xi Jinping, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd provides an authoritative account of the ideological worldview driving Chinese behaviour both domestically and on the world stage—that of President Xi Jinping, who now holds near-total control over the Chinese Communist Party and is now, in effect, president-for-life. Rudd argues that Xi’s worldview differs significantly from those of the leaders who preceded him, and that this ideological shift is reflected in the real world of Chinese policy and behaviour.

Over the last decade, the center of world power has been quietly shifting from Europe to Asia. With oil reserves of several billion barrels, an estimated 900 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and several centuries' worth of competing territorial claims, the South China Sea in particular is a simmering pot of potential conflict. The underreported military buildup in the area where the Western Pacific meets the Indian Ocean means that it will likely be a hinge point for global war and peace for the foreseeable future.