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The Economics of Health and Health Care: International Student Edition, 8th Edition
Par Sherman Folland, Allen C. Goodman, Miron Stano, Shooshan Danagoulian. 2024
The Economics of Health and Health Care is the market-leading health economics textbook, providing comprehensive coverage of all the key…
topics, and balancing economic theory, empirical evidence, and public policy. The ninth edition offers updated material throughout, including two new chapters: Disparities in Health and Health Care (Chapter 7) examines issues of race, ethnicity, income, gender, and geography with respect to health care access, health inputs, and health outcomes; Pandemic Economics (Chapter 9) introduces a new and simplified economic treatment of epidemics and pandemics within the context of COVID-19. We also include applications from the growing literature on digital medicine. The book further highlights the impacts of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and updates its path-breaking comparative analyses across countries to focus on the differences in access and costs. The book continues to provide a clear, step-by-step understanding of health economics, making economic principles accessible to students, supported by boxed examples, figures and tables. Each chapter contains concise summaries, discussion questions, and quantitative exercises to promote student learning. There is also a glossary of key terms and an extensive reference list. Instructors are supported by a range of digital supplements. It is the perfect textbook for students and practitioners taking undergraduate and postgraduate courses in health economics, health policy, and public health.Xenophobia in the Media: Critical Global Perspectives (Routledge Studies in Media, Communication, and Politics)
Par Senthan Selvarajah, Nesrin Kenar, Ibrahim Seaga Shaw, Pradeep Dhakal. 2024
Through its global and critical perspectives, this book brings together knowledge, ideas, and tools to understand the problems and identify…
effective solutions, best practices and alternative approaches to combat xenophobia in the media and build tolerance and social cohesion. Although various studies have been conducted on the extent to which the media construct xenophobic discourse against immigrants and refugees and how they represent immigrants, there exists a research lacuna as to the dynamics of the xenophobia construction in the media, the effect of xenophobic discourse of the media and its function, the nexus between xenophobia construction of the media and the social, economic and political conditions, and the impact of the xenophobic discourse of the media on immigrants and host communities. This book adds knowledge and empirical evidence to fill this research gap. This book will be an important resource for journalists, scholars and students of media and communication studies, journalism, political science, sociology, and anyone covering issues of race and racism, human rights, immigration and refugees.Nostalgia and Political Theory
Par Lawrence Quill. 2024
In Nostalgia and Political Theory, Lawrence Quill advocates the central importance of nostalgia as a theoretical response to the ‘historic’…
past and a vertiginous present. He does so by offering detailed analyses of diverse theoretical approaches, from the ancient world to the modern day, in order to reassess the relation between nostalgia and politics. Quill proposes nostalgia as an organizing concept, silently (and not so silently) influencing theorists as they construct critiques of the present or visions of the political future. Nostalgia and Political Theory surveys key contributions to nostalgic and antinostalgic thinking from across the political spectrum. Assessing the influence of photography, radio, television, and personal computing on changing conceptions of the past, Quill also considers the relation between populism, nationalism, and nostalgia. By challenging those who would dismiss nostalgia as irrational or a symptom of cultural malaise, Quill concludes by advancing the case for a liberal theory of nostalgia. Nostalgia and Political Theory will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of political theory, social theory, sociology, philosophy, political science, memory studies, and nostalgia studies.Italy and Australia: Redefining Bilateral Relations for the Twenty-First Century
Par Gabriele Abbondanza, Simone Battiston. 2023
This book offers a novel and comprehensive reappraisal of current relations between Italy and Australia. For the first time, it…
expands the scope of analysis by encompassing and critically reviewing research avenues that have been understudied so far. In order to pursue this objective, it provides innovative analyses on bilateral history, reciprocal migration, socio-cultural ties, international relations and trade, comparative politics, and scientific cooperation.By adopting a multidisciplinary approach, this book makes a significant contribution to multiple disciplinary literatures, benefitting social science scholars, policymakers, and professionals working in a number of fields. Mindful of the wide scope and multidisciplinary nature of this innovative research, the editors oversee a careful balance of different theories, methodologies, sources, and data, in accordance with the conventions of each discipline employed in this volume. As a result, this book encourages a broader and more nuanced understanding of Italian-Australian relations in the 21st century.The Roads to Congress 2022: Controversies and Competing Visions for America's Future
Par Walter Clark Wilson, Sean D. Foreman, Marcia L. Godwin. 2023
This book analyzes both local and national House and Senate campaigns in the 2022 midterm elections to reveal how distinctive…
campaign dynamics have a collective national impact. Despite serious efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential race that went mostly unopposed by Republicans, the GOP is poised to gain seats, and perhaps control of Congress less than two years later. Their efforts to accomplish this feat may be explained by the biannual pattern of surging and declining partisan electorates that political scientists have long used to explain election outcomes. But in an era where global pandemic lingers, inflation hit its highest rate in two generations, Wall Street faces its first bear market in more than a decade, war among developed nations has returned to the international stage, and efforts by a former President to maintain his grip on a party that lost the 2020 popular vote by 9 million proved largely successful, the story is clearly more complicated. The 2022 midterms thus arrive on the heels of unprecedented developments for democracy in America. The Roads to Congress 2022 provides an essential guide to understanding these developments, with thematic chapters authored by more than thirty experts in campaigns and elections that explore the evolving state of party politics, electoral governance, redistricting, participation and representation, and profile the key races of the season.Artifacts Versus Nature Body: A Wealth-Additive Scheme of Enterprise, Economics, and Nature Managing
Par Masayuki Matsui. 2023
This book proposes a wealth-additive scheme of managing and maximizing (win–win and sharing) the marginal value (eco-entropy) of artifacts by…
humanizing the artifacts’ enterprise and their economics with nature. This type of clockwork would be achieved on a base of the science of nature versus artifacts and the body of science in my Springer books since 2008. My books are advancing factory science, economics, and the science of artifacts and play their role in the sandwich theory and its pair-map microcosm of the 3D-type, toward the development of body science. Then, the wealth-additive goal of the “body” is not only similar to the marginal profit, GDP, and value in economics, but also means the marginal diversity (eco-entropy) and its wealth of economics versus reliability (sustainability) in the body of the world. The modern world, for example, is faced with deadlocked negotiations over the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) bodies at the United Nations. Thus, the forthcoming world of SDGs would be much better and more constructive at transforming traditional bodies of the 3M&I class (human, material, money, and information) as some nano (gene/therblig)-transformation toward eco-entropy(marginal value/diversity) on earth. This semi-visible world is traditionally limited to a molecular size and is too rough at the practical rig-level. Thus, any unsolved and invisible contradictions left behind on earth are subject to SDGs in the practical world. This approach proposes a visible method that could find and solve these contradictions (angles) by transforming the artifact's body, consisting of the 3M&I gene. The pair-map microcosm and its Matsui's M-equation have been designed mainly based on nature and science books on artifacts (in 2016 and 2019). Following these visible methods, our well-being subject might be able to make a breakthrough or make such unsolved contradictions or stalemates subside as any SDGs society of individuals in the near future.Finally, the book will explore and construct a new academic discipline involving 3M&I body science versus cybernetics. And, the study introduces validation cases of convenience stores, self-driving cars, and robotization (individualization) of artificial objects as the realization of the supply–demand system and the ideal form of artificial and natural bodies. Based on this perspective, the dialogue is conducted according to a creative structure of six parts, twelve chapters, and two appendices.Designing Networks Cities: Inclusive, Hyper-Connected, Emergent, and Sustainable Urbanism
Par Steve Whitford, James Brearley. 2024
designing networks cities presents a sophisticated, multi-disciplinary, and multi-dimensional approach to urban design. Emerging from years of practice, experimentation, and…
research by designers (landscape architects, urban planners, urban designers and architects), this approach engages with contemporary thought across a number of disciplines to re-invent the entrenched blunt instruments of the city making process. A cry for flexible, sharp-instruments in urban design, designing networks cities presents a multi-dimensional way of seeing the essential components of the city (form, space-time, order and aesthetics). It purposefully links traditional architectural design derivation mechanisms to urban design, in the hope that cities will not only be pragmatic, but also become sophisticated iconographically, poetically, and syntactically. It provides the tools to enable decision making within a multiplicity of constraints and opportunities: a philosophy of becoming, not being; a science of dynamic systems, not stasis; and an art of sensations, not subjectivity. And finally, and most importantly, it argues why it is important that cities embrace these multiple dimensions of society on a planet that is facing increasing environmental challenges: an economics focused on equity for all, not for some more than others; a politics supporting a genuine representational democracy, not one representing the overly influential; and a culture [including history] that embraces difference, not one that encourages division. designing networks cities not only provides the means to identify these issues and a methodology to deal with them within a complex emerging co-existence, but also demonstrates the development of cities that embrace and respond to the complexities of life in what some are calling the Anthropocene.Congress and the Politics of Sports: Homefield Advantage (Routledge Research in American Politics and Governance)
Par Colton C. Campbell and David A. Dulio. 2024
This volume covers an aspect of Congress mostly untouched in literature, examining Congress through the lens of sports. Across a…
set of broad and probing chapters, this book offer insights into some of the historic and contemporary challenges that sports have presented to Congress, along with highlighting the ways in which Congress has impacted the sports industry. The authors utilize a wide range of case studies to provide readers with a contemporary view of the inter-play between Congress and sports, at both amateur and professional levels. Perspectives are drawn from an interdisciplinary and cross organizational roster of authors, uniquely positioned to discuss various their subjects. With real attention now being given to issues associated with sports, and an increasing number of lawmakers using sports to push policy agendas and create legislative opportunities, this book will be a vital resource for understanding the dynamic relationship between the two entities. Grounded in relevant literature, and written in an accessible and engaging manner, Congress and the Politics of Sports will be of great interest to both academic researchers and practitioners involved with US politics, Congress and congressional studies, public policy, sports studies and sport history.Leadership and Economic Development Challenges in Post-Colonial Africa: Creating Inclusive Economic Growth (Sustainable Development Goals Series)
Par Chukwuemeka Ezenwa Osuigwe. 2023
This book explores the economic and development challenges seen within post-colonial Africa. Particular attention is given to governance and political…
leadership challenges within Africa and how they have resulted in poor education facilities, a lack of infrastructure development, corruption, and economic insecurity. The ways in which Africa’s natural resources and agricultural land have not been utilised to drive development and economic growth are examined in relation to internal political conflicts. Broader issues, such as labour exploitation, financial leakage, and the exclusion of women from decision making, are also discussed. This book highlights poor political leadership within Africa and presents a framework for inclusive economic growth within post-colonial Africa. It will be of interest to students, researchers, policymakers and leaders working with development of African economics.Examining the EU's promotion of human rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans+ and intersex (LGBTI) persons in Uganda during the…
period of 2009 to 2017, this book investigates how a public administration defines and deals with a wicked problem. The empirical puzzle of how the topic of human rights for LGBTI persons, despite its highly contested nature, travelled between Brussels and Kampala, became codified in form of LGBTI Guidelines (2013) and institutionalized within EU foreign policy is addressed as one of translation and sensemaking. The investigation focuses on the process of problem definition in everyday practice by EU staff and EU member states’ staff in Brussels and Kampala. This book therefore provides key insights into how public administrations deal with wicked problems, how contested ideas can become institutionalized and how an idea is translated and made sense of across time, levels and cultural boundaries. The findings are of interest especially to scholars of wicked problems, sociological new institutionalism and public administration as well as international relations and EU studies, human rights, gender and sexuality studies.Migration and Home: IMISCOE Short Reader (IMISCOE Research Series)
Par Mastoureh Fathi, Caitríona Ní Laoire. 2024
This open access short reader offers an intersectional perspective on the meaning of home in migration. The book provides a…
pathway through existing scholarship on home and migration, exploring how intersectional power relations and transnational migration regimes are felt, experienced, lived and navigated by migrants, who are differently positioned, in the making and imagining of home. The meanings associated with home are composed of the interrelation of places, spaces, people, social relations, materialities, emotions and temporalities. These multiple aspects highlight the complexities inherent in the idea of home, which come to the fore particularly when one moves location. Migration and Home explores these issues by focusing on specific key aspects of home in migration: home and gender; home and age; home and materiality; and home and migration status, class and race. It proposes the concept of structural im/possibilities as a framework for understanding the power relations and structures that shape where, when and for whom home in migration is more, or less, possible.This book investigates early modern women’s interventions in politics and the public sphere during times of civil war in England…
and France. Taking this transcultural and comparative perspective, and the period designation “early modern” expansively, Antigone’s Example identifies a canon of women’s civil-war writings; it elucidates their historical specificity as well as the transhistorical context of civil war, a context which, it argues, enabled women’s participation in political thought.50 Things They Don't Want You to Know
Par Jerome Hudson. 2019
Breitbart.com editor Jerome Hudson delivers the red pills his readers know him for, showing you the facts, statistics, and analysis…
that the mainstream media have worked so hard to hideDescription:If you heard that one president deported more people than any other president, started the program of family separation, and did nothing to stop Russia’s election meddling, how many of them would guess it was Obama?In 50 Things They Don’t Want You to Know Jerome Hudson dives deeply into the things Americans are not supposed to realize. Many of our most hotly debate topics are shaped by Davos power brokers, woke college professors, TV talking heads, social media activists and feckless Washington swamp monsters who want you to only follow their narrative. Your teachers, your politicians, and your local paper are not likely to ever tell you:Racial minorities fare far better in the absence of race-based affirmative action policies.Latinos make up a little more than 50% of the Border Patrol, according to 2016 data.The U.S. settled more refugees in 2017 than any other nation.Between 2011 and 2016, the IRS documented 1.3 million identity thefts by Illegal aliens.Half of federal arrests are immigration-related.Welfare recipients in 34 states earn more than a person making minimum wage.Taxpayers doled out $2.6 billion in food stamps to dead people in less than two years.1,700 private jets flew to Davos to discuss the impact of global warming.Google could swing an election by secretly adjusting its search algorithm, and we would have no way of knowing.Once you’re done reading 50 Things They Don’t Want You to Know, you’ll never trust the powers that be to give you the whole truth again.The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir
Par John Bolton. 2020
As President Trump&’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton spent many of his 453 days in the room where it happened,…
and the facts speak for themselves. The result is a White House memoir that is the most comprehensive and substantial account of the Trump Administration, and one of the few to date by a top-level official. With almost daily access to the President, John Bolton has produced a precise rendering of his days in and around the Oval Office. What Bolton saw astonished him: a President for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation. &“I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn&’t driven by reelection calculations,&” he writes. In fact, he argues that the House committed impeachment malpractice by keeping its prosecution focused narrowly on Ukraine when Trump&’s Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy—and Bolton documents exactly what those were, and attempts by him and others in the Administration to raise alarms about them. He shows a President addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government. In Bolton&’s telling, all this helped put Trump on the bizarre road to impeachment. &“The differences between this presidency and previous ones I had served were stunning,&” writes Bolton, who worked for Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43. He discovered a President who thought foreign policy is like closing a real estate deal—about personal relationships, made-for-TV showmanship, and advancing his own interests. As a result, the US lost an opportunity to confront its deepening threats, and in cases like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea ended up in a more vulnerable place. Bolton&’s account starts with his long march to the West Wing as Trump and others woo him for the National Security job. The minute he lands, he has to deal with Syria&’s chemical attack on the city of Douma, and the crises after that never stop. As he writes in the opening pages, &“If you don&’t like turmoil, uncertainty, and risk—all the while being constantly overwhelmed with information, decisions to be made, and sheer amount of work—and enlivened by international and domestic personality and ego conflicts beyond description, try something else.&” The turmoil, conflicts, and egos are all there—from the upheaval in Venezuela, to the erratic and manipulative moves of North Korea&’s Kim Jong Un, to the showdowns at the G7 summits, the calculated warmongering by Iran, the crazy plan to bring the Taliban to Camp David, and the placating of an authoritarian China that ultimately exposed the world to its lethal lies. But this seasoned public servant also has a great eye for the Washington inside game, and his story is full of wit and wry humor about how he saw it played.Blood and Sand: Suez, Hungary, and Eisenhower's Campaign for Peace
Par Alex Von Tunzelmann. 2016
A revelatory popular history that tells the story of the Suez Crisis and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956—a tale of…
conspiracy and revolutions, spies and terrorists, kidnappings and assassination plots, the fall of the British Empire and rise of American hegemony under the heroic leadership of President Dwight D. Eisenhower—which shaped the Middle East and Europe we know today.The year 1956 was a turning point in history. Over sixteen extraordinary days in October and November, the twin crises of Suez and Hungary pushed the world to the brink of a nuclear conflict and what many at the time were calling World War III. Blood and Sand relates this story hour-by-hour, through an international cast of characters: Anthony Eden, the British prime minister, caught in a trap of his own making; Gamal Abdel Nasser, the bold young populist leader of Egypt; David Ben-Gurion, the strong-willed founding prime minister of Israel; Guy Mollet, the bellicose French prime minister; and Dwight D. Eisenhower, the American president, torn between an old world order and a new one in the very same week that his own fate as president was to be decided by the American people.This is a fresh new account of these dramatic events and people, one that for the first time sets both crises in the context of the global Cold War, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the treacherous power politics of imperialism and oil. Blood and Sand resonates strikingly with the problems of oil control, religious fundamentalism, and international unity that face the world today, and is essential reading for anyone concerned with the state of the modern Middle East and Europe.The veteran political journalist and New York Times bestselling author goes behind the scenes at the White House to recount…
the dramatic tale of a pivotal period in the Obama presidency, from the game-changing 2010 midterm elections to the beginning of the critical 2012 campaign season—a tumultuous time that tested the president as never before and set the stage for a titanic clash over the future of the nationAfter Barack Obama's first two years as president—during which he navigated the United States through its severest economic crisis since the Great Depression while managing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—he was faced with a bitterly divided nation and an emboldened political opposition dedicated to impeding his presidency. What followed was a year of political crises and fierce battles that would transform Obama and profoundly shape the terrain for the next election.In Showdown, astute political journalist David Corn chronicles and examines this crucial time in the Obama presidency and its impact on the nation's future. Drawing on interviews with White House officials, Obama's inner circle, members of Congress, and others, Corn takes the reader into the Oval Office and the back rooms on Capitol Hill for a fast-paced and gripping account of the major events as they unfolded: the controversial tax-cut deal with Congress in December 2010; the repeal of Don't Ask/Don't Tell; the passage of the New START treaty; the near shutdown of the government in early 2011; the revolutionary Arab spring; the killing of Osama bin Laden; the intense, high-wire debt-ceiling negotiations (in which intransigent House Republicans risked the nation's financial standing); House Speaker John Boehner's erratic maneuvers during the rise and fall of the grand bargain; and the face-off between Obama and congressional Republicans over how best to create jobs. Corn captures the dilemmas faced by a president assailed by disappointed progressives and defiantly obstructionist Republicans determined to see his defeat. Here is a chief executive trying to balance the cross-cutting demands of governance and politics while handling unending challenges at home and abroad. The book reveals a thoughtful leader with a cool head who is unafraid to take risks and make tough choices, a steely battler who successfully turned his enemies' obstinacy to his advantage. Obama has often frustrated supporters, but Corn shows how the president, who often puts pragmatism ahead of partisan demands, has craftily operated within a hostile conservative political climate, looking to win the long game, achieve progressive goals, and, ultimately, win reelection.A vivid and powerful account of White House decision-making, Showdown offers a unique and enlightening look at the turbulent American political scene during one of the most consequential moments of the nation's history, and explains the fascinating and complicated leader at the heart of this vortex.One Nation Under Guns: How Gun Culture Distorts Our History and Threatens Our Democracy
Par Dominic Erdozain. 2024
This takedown of American gun culture argues that the nation&’s founders did not intend the Second Amendment to guarantee an…
individual right to bear arms—and that this distortion of the record is an urgent threat to democracy.&“At once eye-opening and enraging, One Nation Under Guns is that rare book that can help change the way we live in this country.&”—Eddie S. Glaude Jr., bestselling author of Begin AgainMore than a hundred lives are lost to firearms every day in America. The cost is more than the numbers—it is the fear, the anxiety, the dread of public spaces that an armed society has created under the tortured rubric of freedom. But the norms of today are not the norms of American history or the values of its founders. They are the product of a gun culture that has imposed its vision on a sleeping nation.Historian Dominic Erdozain argues that we have wrongly ceded the big-picture argument on guns: As we parse legislation on background checks and automatic-weapons bans, we fail to ask what place guns should have in a functioning democracy. Taking readers on a brilliant historical journey, Erdozain shows how the founders feared the tyranny of individuals as much as the tyranny of kings—the idea that any person had a right to walk around armed was anathema to their notion of freedom and the peaceful republic they hoped to build. They wrote these ideas into the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, ideas that were subsequently affirmed by two centuries of jurisprudence.And yet the twin scourges of racism and nationalism would combine to create a darker American vision—a rogue and reckless freedom based on birth and blood. It was this freedom, not the liberty promised by the Constitution, that generated our modern gun culture, with its mystic conceptions of good guys and bad guys, innocence and guilt. By the time the U.S. Supreme Court reinvented the Second Amendment in 2008&’s District of Columbia v. Heller, an opinion that Erdozain convincingly eviscerates, many Americans had already acceded to the fiction: the unfreedom of an armed society. To save our democracy, he argues, we must fight for the founders&’ true idea of what it means to be free.Waco Rising: David Koresh, the FBI, and the Birth of America's Modern Militias
Par Kevin Cook. 2023
Named one of The New Yorker's "Best Books of 2023"A news-making account of the war between David Koresh’s Branch Davidians…
and the FBI, and how their standoff launched today’s militiasIn 1993, David Koresh and a band of heavily armed evangelical Christians took on the might of the US government. A two-month siege of their compound in Waco, Texas, ended in a firefight that killed seventy-six, including twenty-five children. America is still picking up the pieces, and we still haven’t heard the full story.Kevin Cook, who revealed the truth behind a mythic, misunderstood murder in his 2014 Kitty Genovese, finally provides the full story of what happened at Waco. He gives readers a taste of Koresh’s deadly charisma and takes us behind the scenes at the Branch Davidians’ compound, where “the new Christ” turned his followers into servants and sired seventeen children by a dozen “wives.” In vivid accounts packed with human drama, Cook harnesses never-reported material to reconstruct the FBI’s fifty-one-day siege of the Waco compound in minute-to-minute detail. He sheds new light on the Clinton administration’s approval of a lethal governmental assault in a new, definitive account of the firefight that ended so many lives and triggered the rise of today’s militia movement. Waco drew the battle lines for American extremists—in Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh’s words, “Waco started this war.” With help from sources as diverse as Branch Davidian survivors and the FBI’s lead negotiator during the siege, Cook draws a straight line from Waco’s ashes to the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol and insurrections yet to come.Unmissable reading for anyone interested in the truth of what happened in Texas three decades ago, Waco Rising is chillingly relevant today. Here is the spark that ignited today’s antigovernment militias.Reputational Security: Refocusing Public Diplomacy for a Dangerous World
Par Nicholas J. Cull. 2024
We are living in turbulent times, witnessing renewed international conflict, resurgent nationalism, declining multilateralism, and a torrent of hostile propaganda.…
How are we to understand these developments and conduct diplomacy in their presence? Nicholas J. Cull, the distinguished historian of propaganda, revisits the international media campaigns of the past in the light of the challenges of the present. His concept of Reputational Security deftly links issues of national image and outreach to the deepest needs of any state, rescuing them from the list of low-priority optional extras to which they are so often consigned in the West. Reputational Security, he argues, comes from being known and appreciated in the world. With clarity and determination, Cull considers core tasks, approaches, and opportunities available for international actors today, including counterpropaganda, media development, diaspora diplomacy, cultural work, and – perhaps most surprisingly of all – media disarmament. This book is crucial for all who care about responding to the threat of malign media disruption, revitalizing international cooperation, and establishing the Reputational Security we and our allies need to survive and flourish. Reputational Security is enlightening reading for students and scholars of public diplomacy, international relations, security studies, communications, and media, as well as practitioners.'HUGELY IMPRESSIVE' - THE INDEPENDENT'AN ASTONISHINGLY FINE HISTORY' - COUNTRY LIFEThe history of the world's most successful military alliance, from…
the wrecked Europe of 1945 to Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.As they signed NATO into being after World War II, its founders fervently believed that only if the West's democracies banded permanently together could they avoid a catastrophic global atomic conflict. Over the 75 years since, the alliance has indeed avoided war with Russia, also becoming a major political, strategic and diplomatic player well beyond its borders. It has survived disagreements between leaders from Eisenhower, Churchill and de Gaulle to Trump, Stoltenberg and Merkel, faced down Kremlin foes from Stalin to Putin and endured unending questions and debate over what new nations might be allowed to join.Deterring Armageddon takes the reader from backroom deals that led to NATO's creation, through the Cold War, the Balkans and Afghanistan to the current confrontation with the Kremlin following the invasion of Ukraine. It examines the tightrope walked by alliance leaders between a powerful United States sometimes flirting with isolationism and European nations with their ever-evolving wishes for autonomy and influence. Having spent much of its life preparing for conflicts that might never come, NATO has sometimes found itself in wars that few had predicted - and with its members now again planning for a potential major European conflict.It is a tale of tension, danger, rivalry, conflict, big personalities and high-stakes military and diplomatic posturing - as well as espionage, politics and protest. From the Korean War to the pandemic, the Berlin and Cuba crises to the chaotic evacuation from Kabul, Deterring Armageddon tells how the alliance has shaped and been shaped by history - and looks ahead to what might be the most dangerous era it has ever faced.'Utterly eye-opening - compelling, haunting and continually illuminating. As Peter Apps so brilliantly demonstrates in this gripping book, the story of the NATO alliance is in many ways a parallel global history of the last 75 years. As well as all the outbreaks of seething tension between the US and its European allies - and the counter-moves of rival powers - this is also an account of just how often in those postwar years that we all stood on the edge of the most terrible abyss. With mesmerising fluency, and dazzling research, Apps follows the criss-crossing threads of the Cold War and beyond. Those threads converge in our shadowed present, and the conflict in Ukraine. In order to fathom today's dark world, Apps has explored a labyrinth of once-classified history, and he brings dazzling clarity.' - Sinclair McKay