The Lessons of Tragedy
Statecraft and World Order
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Narrated by:
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Marc Cashman
About this listen
An eloquent call to draw on the lessons of the past to address current threats to international order
The ancient Greeks hard-wired a tragic sensibility into their culture. By looking disaster squarely in the face, by understanding just how badly things could spiral out of control, they sought to create a communal sense of responsibility and courage - to spur citizens and their leaders to take the difficult actions necessary to avert such a fate. Today, after more than 70 years of great-power peace and a quarter-century of unrivaled global leadership, Americans have lost their sense of tragedy. They have forgotten that the descent into violence and war has been all too common throughout human history. This amnesia has become most pronounced just as Americans and the global order they created are coming under graver threat than at any time in decades.
In a forceful argument that brims with historical sensibility and policy insights, two distinguished historians argue that a tragic sensibility is necessary if America and its allies are to address the dangers that menace the international order today. Tragedy may be commonplace, Brands and Edel argue, but it is not inevitable - so long as we regain an appreciation of the world's tragic nature before it is too late.
Cover image obtained from Ancient Sculpture Gallery (www.ancientsculpturegallery.com)
©2019 Hal Brands and Charles Edel (P)2019 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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- Unabridged
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The World is designed to provide listeners of any age and experience with the essential background and building blocks they need to make sense of this complicated and interconnected world. It will empower them to manage the flood of daily news. Listeners will become more informed, discerning citizens, better able to arrive at sound, independent judgments. While it is impossible to predict what the next crisis will be or where it will originate, those who listen to The World will have what they need to understand its basics and the principal choices for how to respond.
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Excellent Primer for young adults
- By Howells on 05-24-20
By: Richard Haass
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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
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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 Last President of Europe
- Emmanuel Macron's Race to Revive France and Save the World
- By: William Drozdiak
- Narrated by: Paul Hodgson
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
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A revelatory examination of the global impact of Emmanuel Macron's tumultuous presidency. In The Last President of Europe, William Drozdiak tells with exclusive inside access the story of Macron's presidency and the political challenges the French leader continues to face.
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Interesting but poorly read
- By Anonymous User on 05-12-22
By: William Drozdiak
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Destined for War
- Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?
- By: Graham Allison
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
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War with China is much more likely than anyone thinks. When Athens went to war with Sparta some 2,500 years ago, the Greek historian Thucydides identified one simple cause: A rising power threatened to displace a ruling one. As the eminent Harvard scholar Graham Allison explains, in the past 500 years, great powers have found themselves in "Thucydides's Trap" 16 times. In 12 of the 16, the results have been catastrophic.
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Balances, Counter-Balances and Traps
- By Joyce U. Olewe on 10-09-17
By: Graham Allison
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All Measures Short of War
- The Contest for the Twenty-First Century and the Future of American Power
- By: Thomas J. Wright
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
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Russia and China are increasingly revisionist in their regions. The Middle East appears to be unraveling. And many Americans question why the United States ought to lead. What will great power competition look like in the decades ahead? What impact will geopolitics have on globalization? And what strategy should the United States pursue to succeed in an increasingly competitive world? In this book, Thomas Wright explains how major powers will compete fiercely even as they try to avoid war with each other.
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Globalist propaganda
- By Anthony Colosimo Jr on 07-10-21
By: Thomas J. Wright
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The Russia Trap
- How Our Shadow War with Russia Could Spiral into Nuclear Catastrophe
- By: George Beebe
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 7 hrs and 7 mins
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Every American president since the end of the Cold War has called for better relations with Russia. But each has seen relations get worse by the time he left office. Now, the two countries are facing off in a virtual war being fought without clear goals or boundaries. Why? George Beebe argues that new game-changing technologies, disappearing rules of the game, and distorted perceptions on both sides are combining to lock Washington and Moscow into an escalatory spiral that they do not recognize.
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Too soft on Russia
- By Jim Flynn on 06-28-20
By: George Beebe
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The Birth of Classical Europe
- A History from Troy to Augustine
- By: Simon Price, Peter Thonemann
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
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To an extraordinary extent we continue to live in the shadow of the classical world. At every level, from languages to calendars to political systems, we are the descendants of a “classical Europe,” using frames of reference created by ancient Mediterranean cultures. As this consistently fresh and surprising new audio book makes clear, however, this was no less true for the inhabitants of those classical civilizations themselves, whose myths, history, and buildings were an elaborate engagement with an already old and revered past - one filled with great leaders and writers....
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Excellent overview of the Classical World
- By David I. Williams on 01-12-14
By: Simon Price, and others
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The Age of Illusions
- How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory
- By: Andrew Bacevich
- Narrated by: Andrew Bacevich, Rob Shapiro
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
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When the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Washington establishment felt it had prevailed in a world-historical struggle. Our side had won, a verdict that was both decisive and irreversible. For the world’s “indispensable nation”, its “sole superpower”, the future looked very bright. History, having brought the United States to the very summit of power and prestige, had validated American-style liberal democratic capitalism as universally applicable.
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Needs an update
- By Scott Burton on 05-24-20
By: Andrew Bacevich
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The End of Tsarist Russia
- The March to World War I and Revolution
- By: Dominic Lieven
- Narrated by: Shaun Grindell
- Length: 18 hrs and 54 mins
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World War I and the Russian Revolution together shaped the 20th century in profound ways. In The End of Tsarist Russia, acclaimed scholar Dominic Lieven connects for the first time the two events, providing both a history of the First World War's origins from a Russian perspective and an international history of why the revolution happened.
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A good book done in by bad narration.
- By James on 05-25-16
By: Dominic Lieven
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Lee Kuan Yew
- The Grand Master’s Insights on China, United States, and the World
- By: Graham Allison, Robert D. Blackwill, Ali Wyne
- Narrated by: Michael McConnohie, Francis Chau
- Length: 4 hrs and 41 mins
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Lee, the founding father of modern Singapore and its prime minister from 1959 to 1990, has honed his wisdom during more than fifty years on the world stage. Almost single-handedly responsible for transforming Singapore into a Western-style economic success, he offers a unique perspective on the geopolitics of East and West. American presidents from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama have welcomed him to the White House.
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Thought-provoking
- By Jean on 12-11-14
By: Graham Allison, and others
What listeners say about The Lessons of Tragedy
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jeffrey D
- 05-23-19
The authors should read Oedipus Rex and Aristotle
The authors remind us that the world is a dangerous place. So far, so good. But I would not recommend listening to this book. The authors' grasp of Greek tragedy is tenuous and tendentious. I was surprised that a professor of international relations or the like at a well-regarded university would write a book about global strategy as a melodrama. It also seemed very backward-looking, at a time of great technological, economic, and environmental change.
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