Books

A new book debates who wins wars and why.

Plus, more international fiction releases in March.

Retracing the road to Brexit, a new book reveals the deep roots of British Euroskepticism.

A CIA veteran depicts Moscow’s espionage arsenal. What is the West going to do about it?

Reads that shed light on the origins of today’s conflict—and Tehran’s possible future.

In India, a new caste census risks making prejudice permanent.

What a popular new work of speculative political science gets right about Russia, Ukraine, and NATO.

A new book shows why Europe’s broadening vs. deepening debate is a false choice.

The continent’s survival isn’t a question. The brightness of its future very much is.

A conversation with the authors of “The Great Heist” on Beijing’s spycraft—and what can be done about it.

What if elections aren’t the be-all and end-all?

London won the spoils of war from France—and lost the United States.

Plus, more international fiction releases in February.

The story of how Washington neglected the Arctic—until Trump 2.0.

The “rules-based international order” may prove stronger than Trump—or anyone else—realizes.

From the ashes of communism emerged a corrupt, nihilistic, and warmongering elite.

Plus, more international fiction releases in January.

A new book argues—unconvincingly—that there is a “blank space” where culture used to be.

The 30 biggest releases in foreign affairs, history, and political science.

Our columnists and staff writers recommend their top reads for the end of the year.

Scott Anderson’s “King of Kings” offers a timely picture of U.S. myopia and miscalculation in Tehran.

Michael McFaul wants more democracy promotion. Is now the time?

Plus, more international fiction releases in December.

Beijing’s continued economic growth depends on a fragile balance of control and freedom.

The idea of a cohesive West is fading, but a new book finds that the concept endures.

Under Trump 2.0, a new book by policymaking heavyweights is an exercise in absurdity.

Julia Ioffe’s new feminist history of Russia offers important lessons for the West.

Beijing finds itself in a precarious geopolitical position.

Plus, more international fiction releases.

Sometimes, literature meets the moment better than diplomacy.

How an ordinary ingredient became a symbol of collective complaint.

Lucius Shepard’s hallucinogenic stories anticipated Trump’s war fantasies.

A. Wess Mitchell’s tour through two millennia of diplomacy is catnip for foreign-policy wonks.

U.S. military planners are caught in an impossible dilemma.

Megha Majumdar’s “A Guardian and a Thief” interrogates how the have-nots get by in a climate catastrophe.

Don’t read these new titles on Russia’s wars before bedtime.

Alexandre Kojève was one of the most influential 20th-century thinkers. How can we make sense of him today?

The prize-winning political philosopher on how to engage in morally robust public discourse in the age of Trump.

Trump’s plan is just the latest example.

Historical fiction set in ancient Britain and 20th-century Puerto Rico.

How an idea that promised a brave new world seemingly delivered dystopia instead.

New Delhi still faces many obstacles on its path to great-power status.

A new biography should be required reading for everyone currently working in silence in Washington.

Dan Wang’s account of an engineering state mixes the grand and the intimate.

A memoir of Ukrainian cuisine seeks to preserve worlds threatened by Russia.

Two new books explore the tangled world of royal stories and real crimes.

A new biography of U Thant shows how his peacemaking abilities helped the United Nations grow and flourish—for a time.

The Cold War was tragic, comic, and epic—and it’s still playing out today.

From a North American nail salon to a Korean institute for haunted objects.

A new history of the Cold War unwittingly exposes Russian distortions of the past.

Dollar dominance is here to stay, if the United States can keep it.

There has rarely been a safer window for the transition of security on the continent away from America.

For centuries, French leaders have used the iconic museum to cement their place in the world. Macron is no different.

Kwame Nkrumah’s life demonstrates that the end of colonial rule in Africa is central to modern history.

How the agency’s program to circulate banned books helped take down the Iron Curtain.

The dog days of summer, from an 18th-century English village to modern-day Tbilisi.

In a newly translated collection, the Japanese German author probes what it means to live between languages.

The biggest releases in foreign affairs, history, and economics.

Amid Elbridge Colby’s review of the submarine deal, three books consider the future of the alliance itself.

What CIA insiders make of the MAGA moles and toadies now in charge of U.S. national security.

From a Salvadoran multiverse to queer life in contemporary Nigeria.

A new book details how the United States helped create a truly political animal.

‘Strangers in the Land’ illuminates a dark, enduring period of U.S. history.

A new book raises questions about Russia’s bygone fight in Chechnya—and the future legacy of conflicts today.

Trump’s attacks on American universities come as China seeks to dominate higher education.

A new biography explores the tangled politics of a revolutionary father.

Peculiar forms of criminality, as seen from front-line Ukraine and Lagos.

A new book looks at the history of the communist thinker’s reception in the capitalist United States.

The women behind Italy’s underground press during World War II offer important lessons for democracies today.

A presidential speech in 1937 marked an unexpected turn in U.S. strategic thought.

A giant firm and a superpower have become deeply entangled.

Germany’s new chancellor is in a race to change Germany so it has a chance to remain the same.

The life and meaning of Zbigniew Brzezinski.

It’s looking increasingly likely that the world’s richest man got played.

Emily Feng’s “Let Only Red Flowers Bloom” delves into identity in Xi’s China.

A bestselling progressive book gets its policy all wrong.

From the Gulf as a modern Wild West to sisterhood in Singapore.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, one of France’s most hated politicians, casts a shadow over the left at a critical juncture.

In Britain, legions of professionals are happy to help shadowy elites stash their wealth.

A new book tries to understand the once-idealistic Russian journalists who now propagandize for Putin.

Perry Link’s essay collection finds meaning in silences.

A graphic novel plays out a nightmarish scenario of authoritarianism in the hopes of waking us up.

An investigative journalist heads to Moscow to hear from the “merchant of death” himself.

Two head-spinning rides through a globalized world.

Centuries of colonialism have spawned magical thinking about race and assimilation.

A scorching legal thriller from Zambia.

From a killing in the West Bank to horror in a postapocalyptic convent.

Eighty years on, the focus on the atomic bombs overlooks the impact of the Tokyo air raid.

Why global resistance movements have failed and where they go from here.

In his autobiography, the pontiff pleads for a world that no longer exists.

The war has exposed post-World War II illusions of a common humanity.

A new book provides insight into the unintended consequences of U.S. sanctions.

From a British techno-dystopia to Berlin’s underground.

A recent book reveals the premodern world as one of mobility and interaction—but it was not without parochialism.

Fighting with China won’t bring jobs home.

The German political establishment has no idea what war looks like today—and doesn’t want to know.

Today’s global powers are running a strange simulation of the weak and wobbly republic that governed Germany before World War II.

Once again, Eurasian autocracies seek to upend the balance of power.

Transfers of territory are central to the country’s efforts at racial reconciliation.

How a moral panic went global—and then began to go away.