Author: Robert J. Lieber
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107010683
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 191
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Book Description
This book makes a strong argument against the widely proclaimed notion that the United States is destined to decline. Everywhere we look, scholars, pundits, politicians, foreign commentators, and the wider blogosphere pronounce and repeat the idea. Today's problems at home and abroad are less severe than those the United States has overcome in the past. Ultimately, the ability to avoid serious decline is less a question of material factors than of policy, leadership, and political will.
Author: Roy F. Baumeister
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101543779
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
One of the world's most esteemed and influential psychologists, Roy F. Baumeister, teams with New York Times science writer John Tierney to reveal the secrets of self-control and how to master it. "Deep and provocative analysis of people's battle with temptation and masterful insights into understanding willpower: why we have it, why we don't, and how to build it. A terrific read." —Ravi Dhar, Yale School of Management, Director of Center for Customer Insights Pioneering research psychologist Roy F. Baumeister collaborates with New York Times science writer John Tierney to revolutionize our understanding of the most coveted human virtue: self-control. Drawing on cutting-edge research and the wisdom of real-life experts, Willpower shares lessons on how to focus our strength, resist temptation, and redirect our lives. It shows readers how to be realistic when setting goals, monitor their progress, and how to keep faith when they falter. By blending practical wisdom with the best of recent research science, Willpower makes it clear that whatever we seek—from happiness to good health to financial security—we won’t reach our goals without first learning to harness self-control.
Author: Robert J. Lieber
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781139460231
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284
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Book Description
The American Era makes a provocative argument about America's world role. It sets out the case for a grand strategy that recognizes American preponderance as necessary and desirable for coping with the perils of the post-9/11 world. The book argues firstly that, Militant Islamic terrorism and weapons of mass destruction pose a threat which requires us to alter the way we think about the pre-emptive and preventive use of force. Secondly, the UN and other international bodies are incapable of acting on these urgent problems. Thirdly, in an international system with no true central authority other countries will inevitably look for leadership to the US. The book argues that if America does not respond actively to terrorist threats, no one else will take the initiative.
Author: Kelly McGonigal
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1583335080
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 290
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Book Description
Based on Stanford University psychologist Kelly McGonigal's wildly popular course "The Science of Willpower," The Willpower Instinct is the first book to explain the science of self-control and how it can be harnessed to improve our health, happiness, and productivity. Informed by the latest research and combining cutting-edge insights from psychology, economics, neuroscience, and medicine, The Willpower Instinct explains exactly what willpower is, how it works, and why it matters. For example, readers will learn: • Willpower is a mind-body response, not a virtue. It is a biological function that can be improved through mindfulness, exercise, nutrition, and sleep. • Willpower is not an unlimited resource. Too much self-control can actually be bad for your health. • Temptation and stress hijack the brain's systems of self-control, but the brain can be trained for greater willpower • Guilt and shame over your setbacks lead to giving in again, but self-forgiveness and self-compassion boost self-control. • Giving up control is sometimes the only way to gain self-control. • Willpower failures are contagious—you can catch the desire to overspend or overeat from your friends—but you can also catch self-control from the right role models. In the groundbreaking tradition of Getting Things Done, The Willpower Instinct combines life-changing prescriptive advice and complementary exercises to help readers with goals ranging from losing weight to more patient parenting, less procrastination, better health, and greater productivity at work.
Author: Victor Bulmer-Thomas
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300235194
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 461
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Book Description
A sweeping history of the United States through the lens of empire—and an incisive look forward as the nation retreats from the global stage A respected authority on international relations and foreign policy, Victor Bulmer-Thomas offers a grand survey of the United States as an empire. From its territorial expansion after independence, through hegemonic rule following World War II, to the nation’s current imperial retreat, the United States has had an uneasy relationship with the idea of itself as an empire. In this book Bulmer-Thomas offers three definitions of empire—territorial, informal, and institutional—that help to explain the nation’s past and forecast a future in which the United States will cease to play an imperial role. Arguing that the move toward diminished geopolitical dominance reflects the aspirations of most U.S. citizens, he asserts that imperial retreat does not necessarily mean national decline and may ultimately strengthen the nation-state. At this pivotal juncture in American history, Bulmer-Thomas’s uniquely global perspective will be widely read and discussed across a range of fields.
Author: Steven W. Hook
Publisher: CQ Press
ISBN: 150638563X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
"It is the best and most effectively presented history of US foreign policy available. It is extremely well written. Its accessibility is established by the book’s clear writing and presentation, with no sacrifice of the more challenging theoretical and policy debates regarding US foreign policy since 1945." —Glenn Palmer, Penn State University The Gold Standard for Textbooks on American Foreign Policy American Foreign Policy Since World War II provides students with an understanding of America’s current challenges by exploring its historical experience as the world’s predominant power since World War II. Through this process of historical reflection and insight, students become better equipped to place the current problems of the nation’s foreign policy agenda into modern policy context. With each new edition, authors Steven W. Hook and John Spanier find that new developments in foreign policy conform to their overarching theme—there is an American "style" of foreign policy imbued with a distinct sense of national exceptionalism. This Twenty-First Edition continues to explore America’s unique national style with chapters that address the aftershocks of the Arab Spring and the revival of power politics. Additionally, an entirely new chapter devoted to the current administration discusses the implications of a changing American policy under the Trump presidency.
Author: Henry R. Nau
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140087372X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 349
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Book Description
A reexamination of America's overloaded foreign policy tradition and its importance for global politics today Debates about U.S. foreign policy have revolved around three main traditions—liberal internationalism, realism, and nationalism. In this book, distinguished political scientist Henry Nau delves deeply into a fourth, overlooked foreign policy tradition that he calls "conservative internationalism." This approach spreads freedom, like liberal internationalism; arms diplomacy, like realism; and preserves national sovereignty, like nationalism. It targets a world of limited government or independent "sister republics," not a world of great power concerts or centralized international institutions. Nau explores conservative internationalism in the foreign policies of Thomas Jefferson, James Polk, Harry Truman, and Ronald Reagan. These presidents did more than any others to expand the arc of freedom using a deft combination of force, diplomacy, and compromise. Since Reagan, presidents have swung back and forth among the main traditions, overreaching under Bush and now retrenching under Obama. Nau demonstrates that conservative internationalism offers an alternative way. It pursues freedom but not everywhere, prioritizing situations that border on existing free countries—Turkey, for example, rather than Iraq. It uses lesser force early to influence negotiations rather than greater force later after negotiations fail. And it reaches timely compromises to cash in military leverage and sustain public support. A groundbreaking revival of a neglected foreign policy tradition, Conservative Internationalism shows how the United States can effectively sustain global leadership while respecting the constraints of public will and material resources.
Author: Benjamin Miller
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022673515X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 362
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Book Description
American foreign policy is the subject of extensive debate. Many look to domestic factors as the driving forces of bad policies. Benjamin Miller instead seeks to account for changes in US international strategy by developing a theory of grand strategy that captures the key security approaches available to US decision-makers in times of war and peace. Grand Strategy from Truman to Trump makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of competing grand strategies that accounts for objectives and means of security policy. Miller puts forward a model that is widely applicable, based on empirical evidence from post-WWII to today, and shows that external factors—rather than internal concerns—are the most determinative.
Author: Frédéric Mérand
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0228004888
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
How great powers react to their inevitable decline shapes their own destiny as well as the course of international politics. Leaders can decide to engage with others or isolate themselves; to build alliances or initiate war; to stoke up nationalism or invest in innovation; to focus on economic competition or develop their people's soft power. While some of these coping strategies foster cooperation, others provoke conflict with neighbours. In Coping with Geopolitical Decline leading political scientists, historians, and sociologists explore the strategies adopted by leaders and domestic elites to prevent, reverse, or deny the decline of their country. Analyzing four European cases (Byzantium, England, France, Russia) before turning to the contemporary debate in the United States, they argue that geopolitics is not fate. Coping strategies depend on the context, which includes cultural representations of decline, the experience of military defeat, and domestic politics. Whether elites choose to modernize their economy, bolster their diplomatic status, or launch preventive war makes a difference in the extent and speed of a country's decline. By the same token, coping strategies affect world order. A well-managed decline allows for a peaceful power transition. Some strategies, however, may preserve the peace at the expense of a country's standing, while others will stave off decline but encourage imperialist adventures or precipitate military conflicts. As the United States challenges the liberal international order, fights back China's ascendency, and reconsiders its traditional alliances, Coping with Geopolitical Decline analyzes key lessons from Europe's experience and provides comparative insight into the likely dynamics of cooperation and conflict in the twenty-first century.
Author: Thierry Balzacq
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198840292
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 801
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Book Description
A clearly articulated, well-defined, and relatively stable grand strategy is supposed to allow the ship of state to steer a steady course through the roiling seas of global politics. However, the obstacles to formulating and implementing grand strategy are, by all accounts, imposing. The Oxford Handbook of Grand Strategy addresses the conceptual and historical foundations, production, evolution, and future of grand strategy from a wide range of standpoints. The seven constituent sections present and critically examine the history of grand strategy, including beyond the West; six distinct theoretical approaches to the subject; the sources of grand strategy, ranging from geography and technology to domestic politics to individual psychology and culture; the instruments of grand strategy's implementation, from military to economic to covert action; political actors', including non-state actors', grand strategic choices; the debatable merits of grand strategy, relative to alternatives; and the future of grand strategy, in light of challenges ranging from political polarization to technological change to aging populations. The result is a field-defining, interdisciplinary, and comparative text that will be a key resource for years to come.
