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1 month ago | 
foreignaffairs.com | Kate Conger |Ryan Mac |Jessica T. Mathews
Conger and Mac, reporters at The New York Times, put their investigative skills and many years covering the tech sector to effective use in producing this astonishingly intimate, minute-by-minute account of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter in 2022. The authors interviewed more than a hundred of Musk’s employees and competitors and got access to recordings of taped meetings and previously unreported documents.
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Sep 26, 2024 | 
nybooks.com | Jessica T. Mathews
Like Toto in The Wizard of Oz, at their 1985 summit in Geneva President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev pulled back the curtain to reveal the truth behind the terrifying specter of nuclear war, which their countries were spending hundreds of billions of dollars to prepare for. “A nuclear war cannot be won,” they jointly stated, and “must never be fought.” They omitted the inescapable corollary of those first six words: a nuclear arms race also cannot be won.
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Apr 23, 2024 | 
foreignaffairs.com | Dale Copeland |Jessica T. Mathews |Richard Hasen |Lawrence Lessig
In This Review In This Review A World Safe for Commerce: American Foreign Policy From the Revolution to the Rise of China Copeland’s valuable book is both a history of the key moments in American foreign trade policy and a theoretical study of what he terms “dynamic realism,” the middle ground between so-called offensive realism (aggressive policies in the interest of protecting the security of the United States) and defensive realism (the recognition that overly aggressive policies can be...
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Apr 23, 2024 | 
foreignaffairs.com | Richard Hasen |Lawrence Lessig |Matthew A. Seligman |Jessica T. Mathews
Two books explore the weaknesses in the U.S. electoral system that could be used to undermine American democracy. Shockingly, the Constitution does not establish the right to vote.
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Feb 20, 2024 | 
foreignaffairs.com | Jeffrey Friedman |Jessica T. Mathews |Nicholas Jacobs |Daniel Shea
In This Review In This Review The Commander-in-Chief Test: Public Opinion and the Politics of Image-Making in U.S. Foreign PolicyFriedman combines quantitative data with archival material on notable foreign policy decisions to examine the connection between public opinion and foreign policy. Spanning 1960 to 2004, the book offers case studies from years in which foreign policy was particularly salient in a national election.
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Feb 20, 2024 | 
foreignaffairs.com | Jessica T. Mathews |Nicholas Jacobs |Daniel Shea |Neil Howe
The Atlantic magazine has produced a valuable special issue that examines in detail the consequences of Donald Trump returning to the presidency in 2025. Two dozen tightly written pieces delve deeply into concerns usually presented as headlines, teasing out second- and third-order consequences. Anne Appelbaum, for instance, looks into the possibility that Trump will withdraw the United States from NATO.
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Feb 20, 2024 | 
foreignaffairs.com | Jessica T. Mathews |Nicholas Jacobs |Daniel Shea |Neil Howe
In This Review In This Review Did It Happen Here? Perspectives on Fascism in AmericaAn anthology of classic texts on fascism combined with analyses by contemporary writers on the present situation in the United States, this volume is intended to shed light on what its editor calls “the fascist debate.” That debate proceeds on two very different planes.
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Feb 20, 2024 | 
foreignaffairs.com | Nicholas Jacobs |Daniel Shea |Jessica T. Mathews |Neil Howe
In This Review In This Review The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of AmericaBased on a hundred years of data compiled by the authors and three large, recent voter surveys, Jacobs and Shea attempt to better understand the decisions of rural voters. For most of American history, no party had a monopoly on the rural vote—except in the Jim Crow South, where the Democrats dominated.
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Dec 12, 2023 | 
foreignaffairs.com | Max Fraser |Jessica T. Mathews |John B. Judis |Ruy Teixeira
In This Review In This Review Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working ClassAt the end of the nineteenth century, the discovery of natural gas in Indiana sparked a huge industrial boom that in turn led to the influx of over eight million poor, white southern migrants first to Indiana and then to the wider Midwest. Many stayed only long enough to buy a better piece of land or new machinery back home.
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Feb 28, 2023 | 
foreignaffairs.com | Philip Bump |Kevin Munger |Stephen Bullivant |Jessica T. Mathews
In This Review In This Review The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America Generation Gap: Why the Baby Boomers Still Dominate American Politics and Culture Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America Three books chart significant portentous demographic trends underway in the United States.
