Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2018 -

McGregor, a top British journalist specializing in Asia who's known for his 2010 study of the Chinese Communist Party (CH, Jan'11, 48-2930), details the ups and downs of postwar China-Japan-US tensions. Episodically, Beijing tries to lure Tokyo into a more neutral position but always fails. China uses commercial deals as bait and constantly plays "history wars" to try to shame Japan. Japanese prime ministers may apologize for wartime atrocities but still visit Yasukuni Shrine to honor war dead, igniting Beijing's howls. China periodically encourages anti-Japan rage but calms it before it gets out of hand. Beijing has always claimed the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, but didn't push it until China sensed its strength and US and Japanese weakness. All three try to play off one against the other, but often blunder by inflexibly demanding too much. Replete with anecdotal and archival quotes, McGregor sees ominous trends as the three nations' policy options narrow and harden. He just mentions Trump and wrote before the current Korea crisis, which, unfortunately, fits all too well with his sense of foreboding. Asia's reckoningis heavy on details and personalities but light on prognosis. Essential for all those dealing with East Asia.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals.

This compact, accessible book pulls together a lifetime of work by Lebow, the distinguished critic of deterrence theory. The introduction and conclusion (totaling 84 pages) are freshly written, and the intervening five chapters are reprints of articles or chapters previously published (from 1989-2014). The counter-factual logic of deterrence was central to the Cold War based on a misreading of the 1938 Munich crisis and led to the disaster of Vietnam and the near-disaster of the Cuban missile crisis. Lebow attacks rationalist models, stressing the need to understand the specificity of the historical context and leader psychology: in the face of uncertainty, leaders don't seek facts, they retreat into illusions. The quest for self-esteem (thumos) is more important than greed or fear as a cause of war. In place of deterrence, Lebow emphasizes the scope for a diplomacy of reassurance. This will be essential reading for any scholar of international security, especially relevant in light of North Korea's nuclear brinksmanship.Summing Up: Essential. Graduate students through professionals.

Johnson (UGA) offers a necessary and encyclopedic account of intelligence oversight, covering its history since 1975, as well as perennial challenges in conducting effective democratic oversight of an enterprise that requires a large measure of secrecy to be effective. With his experience as a congressional staffer involved in the investigation of abuses by the intelligence community and a distinguished career as a scholar of intelligence issues, Johnson brings a wealth of knowledge to this ambitious project. Using the metaphors of firefighting and police patrolling, he provides a useful conceptual framework for understanding the ebb and flow of congressional oversight. The book is not perfect: sentiment clouds Johnson's assessment of former counterintelligence chief James Angleton, for instance, and his typology of intelligence overseers seems arbitrary in application, adding little that simple narrative could not provide. Overall, however, Spy Watching will surely come to be seen as an essential part of the literature on intelligence administration in the US.

This thoroughly sourced study of the political dynamics over the interaction between Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians deals with a part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Rubin (US Department of State), who is comfortable in three related languages and their archival materials (Hebrew, Arabic, English), examines the impact and importance of this particular geographic area of mandated Palestine, focusing on the overall character of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Excluding one glaring omission (there is no substantive mention or discussion of Jordan's annexation of the West Bank in 1950), this is an outstanding historical analysis of a core component to the current Middle East dilemma between Israel and the Palestinians, not only because of the density of the Palestinian population but also its proximity to Jerusalem. The author points out that the Israeli leadership may have sought to control the West Bank to reduce its vulnerability of attack from the east at some point, but it was not considered feasible, at least until the conclusion of the 1967 conflict. This is a clear requirement for inclusion in any collection dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Riley (Stanford) provides a comprehensive historical account of US food aid--from the early founding of the republic through the Obama administration. The author, who gained significant public policy experience working on foreign economic assistance with the US government and the World Bank, traces the various ways in which the US government sought to respond to famines and humanitarian disasters over two centuries. Riley is especially insightful in describing the humanitarian impulses, political dynamics, and legislative tactics that resulted in varied public policy initiatives to meet hunger in low-income countries. Of the book's 21 chapters, the most noteworthy address the humanitarian work of Herbert Hoover, the development of Public Law 480, the politics of food surpluses, President Johnson's policy reforms, and the global food crisis of the early 1970s. Additionally, the book illuminates important lessons through case studies on India, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Ethiopia. Given the breadth and depth of the analysis, this landmark study offers the most authoritative and historically comprehensive assessment of the politics of American food aid. It is essential reading for anyone concerned with food aid and humanitarian assistance.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.

This comprehensive review of international relations literature focuses heavily on the previous work of Kenneth Waltz and structural-realist theory. The idea is to test the neorealist proposition about political stability and balancing in a bipolar system. Tunsjo (Norwegian Defence University College) provides a nuanced version of neorealism with the addition of a geo-structrural element. An argument is put forth that China has become a world power and is a direct competitor to the power position of the US. Bipolarity, the author argues, enhances our understanding of how power centers shift over time. The potential for armed conflict is higher, he maintains, in East Asia than in Europe, and with the ascendant capability of China, the position of the US becomes that of a challenging partner in a new bipolar world order. The author's goal is to build on Waltz's theory in order to better predict a new superpower rivalry in the 21st century. Tunsjo's effort is an essential contribution to international relations theory and a basic introduction to an understanding of the concept of power.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.