New Books in World Affairs

The word "peacebuilding" evokes a story we've all heard over and over: violence breaks out, foreign nations are scandalized, peacekeepers and million-dollar donors come rushing in, warring parties sign a peace agreement and, sadly, within months the situation is back to where it started--sometimes worse. But what strategies have worked to build lasting peace in conflict zones, particularly for ordinary citizens on the ground? And why should other ordinary citizens, thousands of miles away, care?In The Frontlines of Peace: An Insider's Guide to Changing the World (Oxford UP, 2021), Severine Autesserre, award-winning researcher and peacebuilder, examines the well-intentioned but inherently flawed peace industry. With examples drawn from across the globe, she reveals that peace can grow in the most unlikely circumstances. Contrary to what most politicians preach, building peace doesn't require billions in aid or massive international interventions. Real, lasting peace requires giving power to local citizens.The Frontlines of Peace tells the stories of the ordinary yet extraordinary individuals and organizations that are confronting violence in their communities effectively. One thing is clear: successful examples of peacebuilding around the world, in countries at war or at peace, have involved innovative grassroots initiatives led by local people, at times supported by foreigners, often employing methods shunned by the international elite. By narrating success stories of this kind, Autesserre shows the radical changes we must take in our approach if we hope to build lasting peace around us--whether we live in Congo, the United States, or elsewhere.Beth Windisch is a national security practitioner. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

In the late nineteenth century, Spanish intellectuals and entrepreneurs became captivated with Hispanism, a movement of transatlantic rapprochement between Spain and Latin America. Not only was this movement envisioned as a form of cultural empire to symbolically compensate for Spain?s colonial decline but it was also imagined as an opportunity to materially regain the Latin American markets. Paradoxically, a central trope of Hispanist discourse was the antimaterialistic character of Hispanic culture, allegedly the legacy of the moral superiority of Spanish colonialism in comparison with the commercial drive of modern colonial projects. This study examines how Spanish authors, economists, and entrepreneurs of various ideological backgrounds strove to reconcile the construction of Hispanic cultural identity with discourses of political economy and commercial interests surrounding the movement. Drawing from an interdisciplinary archive of literary essays, economic treatises, and political discourses, The Spirit of Hispanism: Commerce, Culture, and Identity Across the Atlantic, 1875-1936 (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020) revisits Peninsular Hispanism to underscore how the interlacing of cultural and commercial interests fundamentally shaped the Hispanist movement. The Spirit of Hispanism will appeal to scholars in Hispanic literary and cultural studies as well as historians and anthropologists who specialize in the history of Spain and Latin America.Ethan Besser Fredrick is a graduate student in Modern Latin American history seeking his PhD at the University of Minnesota. His work focuses on the Transatlantic Catholic movements in Mexico and Spain during the early 20th century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

In Losing Hearts and Minds: American Iranian Relations and International Education During the Cold War (Cornell UP, 2017), Matthew K. Shannon, an associate professor of history at Emory & Henry College, shows the complex role that Iranian student migration to the United States played in shaping the relations between the two countries. For U.S. policymakers, Iranian student migration to the United States was as a useful way to provide Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi with the training and technical expertise necessary for his modernization program. But as Shannon shows, Iranian students quickly became immersed in the progressive student movements of the 1960, eventually turning their critical energies to the shah’s own authoritarian regime and contributing to his overthrow in the 1979 Iranian Revolution. This fascinating monograph is full of many unexpected twists and turns and will be of interest to historians of the U.S. in the world, US-Iran Relations, scholars of higher education, and anyone interested in this important era of U.S. foreign relations.Steven P. Rodriguez is a PhD Candidate in history at Vanderbilt University. You can reach him at steven.p.rodriguez@vanderbilt.edu and follow his twitter at @SPatrickRod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

All the Nations Under Heaven: Immigrants, Migrants, and the Making of New York by Frederick M. Binder, David M. Reimers, and Robert W. Snyder (Columbia University Press, 2019) covers almost 500 years of New York City’s still unfolding story of cultural diversity and political conflict, economic dynamism and unmatched human diversity. This briskly paced volume – which updates a first edition originally published in the mid-1990s – reminds us that today’s hot button debates about immigration, inequality, and globalization have, in various earlier forms, long played roles in the evolution and development of one of the world’s great cities.Bruce Cory is editorial advisor at The Center for New York City Affairs at The New School. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

For the Many: American Feminists and the Global Fight for Democratic Equality (Princeton University Press, 2021) presents an inspiring look at how US women and their global allies pushed the nation and the world toward justice and greater equality for all. Reclaiming social democracy as one of the central threads of American feminism, Dorothy Sue Cobble offers a bold rewriting of twentieth-century feminist history and documents how forces, peoples, and ideas worldwide shaped American politics. Cobble follows egalitarian women’s activism from the explosion of democracy movements before World War I to the establishment of the New Deal, through the upheavals in rights and social citizenship at midcentury, to the reassertion of conservatism and the revival of female-led movements today.Cobble brings to life the women who crossed borders of class, race, and nation to build grassroots campaigns, found international institutions, and enact policies dedicated to raising standards of life for everyone. Readers encounter famous figures, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Frances Perkins, and Mary McLeod Bethune, together with less well-known leaders, such as Rose Schneiderman, Maida Springer Kemp, and Esther Peterson. Multiple generations partnered to expand social and economic rights, and despite setbacks, the fight for the many persists, as twenty-first-century activists urgently demand a more caring, inclusive world.Putting women at the center of US political history, For the Many reveals the powerful currents of democratic equality that spurred American feminists to seek a better life for all. Marshall Poe is the founder and editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

A clear-eyed look at modern India's role in Asia and the broader world. One of India's most distinguished foreign policy thinkers addresses the many questions facing India as it seeks to find its way in the increasingly complex world of Asian geopolitics. A former Indian foreign secretary and national security adviser, Shivshankar Menon traces India's approach to the shifting regional landscape since its independence in 1947. From its leading role in the "nonaligned" movement during the cold war to its current status as a perceived counterweight to China, India often has been an after-thought for global leaders--until they realize how much they needed it. In India and Asian Geopolitics (Brookings, 2021), Menon focuses in particular on India's responses to the rise of China, as well as other regional powers. Menon also looks to the future and analyzes how India's policies are likely to evolve in response to current and new challenges. As India grows economically and gains new stature across the globe, both its domestic preoccupations and international choices become more significant. India itself will become more affected by what happens in the world around it. Menon makes a powerful geopolitical case for an India increasingly and positively engaged in Asia and the broader world in pursuit of a pluralistic, open, and inclusive world order.Medha Prasanna is an MA candidate at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. Her current research focuses on International Organizations and Human Rights Law. You can learn more about her here or email her medp16@gwu.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Teach for America (TFA) continues to be the single largest preparation program for teachers in the United States. As that program grew in the US (attracting attention, support, and controversy in the process), it also expanded overseas with TFA-like programs (starting with TeachFirst in the UK) currently on the ground in over 50 countries.How has the internationalization of TFA gone in countries with different cultures and different educational systems than the American one in which the program originated? And what might “going global” mean as TFA transforms from a national to an international phenomenon?Three scholars who have been tracking TFA/TFAll trajectory join us today at New Books Network to discuss Examining Teach for All: International Perspectives on a Growing Global Network (Routledge, 2020) which brings together the work of over a dozen researchers examining TFAll programs around the world from a range of perspectives.You can learn more about the editors of Examining Teach for All at: Matthew A.M. Thomas, Emilee Rauschenberger, Katherine Crawford-GarrettJonathan Haber is an educational researcher and consultant working at the intersection of pedagogy, technology, and educational policy. His books include MOOCS and Critical Thinking from MIT Press and his LogicCheck project analyzes the reasoning behind the news of the day. You can read more about Jonathan’s work at http://www.jonathanhaber.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

The First World War marked the end point of a process of German globalization that began in the 1870s, well before Germany acquired a colonial empire or extensive overseas commercial interests. Structured around the figures of five influential economists who shaped the German political landscape, Professor of History, Erik Grimmer-Solem’s Learning Empire: Globalization and the German Quest for World Status, 1875-1919 (Cambridge University Press, 2019), explores how their overseas experiences shaped public perceptions of the world and Germany's place in it. These men helped define a German liberal imperialism that came to influence the 'world policy' (Weltpolitik) of Kaiser Wilhelm, Chancellor Bülow, and Admiral Tirpitz. They devised naval propaganda, reshaped Reichstag politics, were involved in colonial and financial reforms, and helped define the debate over war aims in the First World War. Looking closely at German worldwide entanglements, Learning Empire recasts how we interpret German imperialism, the origins of the First World War, and the rise of Nazism, inviting reflection on the challenges of globalization in the current century. Grimmer-Solem, has written an imaginative and first-rate account of several aspects of Kaiserreich Germany’s politics. No one will in the future look at Germany in this period without referencing this book.Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House’s International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

The Emergence of Modern Hospital Management and Organisation in the World 1880s-1930s (Emerald, 2021) uses a range of empirical evidence and case studies drawn from previously unpublished archival sources to offer one of the first international comparative studies on the transformation and modernization of hospital management globally, a century ago.Focusing on the key years between the 1880s and the 1930s, when millions of people crossed the globe and created new large health care needs in the largest cities of the world, Paloma Fernández-Pérez analyzes core themes from a business history perspective, like organization, ownership and the professionalization of management, to reach a new understanding about the history of modern large scale healthcare institutions from the United States to China, with particular attention to Spain.Paloma Fernández Pérez (PhD. in History University of California, Berkeley) is Professor of Economic History at the University of Barcelona. She is currently also a member of the Academic Board of the Emerging Markets Institute of the University of Cornell and an Invited Project Professor of the University of Kyoto in Japan. She is the founder, and coeditor in chief of the Journal of Evolutionary Studies in Business recently accepted for indexation in the Scopus database of journal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Stella Ghervas's Conquering Peace: From the Enlightenment to the European Union (Harvard University Press, 2021) is a bold new look at war and diplomacy in Europe that traces the idea of a unified continent in attempts since the eighteenth century to engineer lasting peace.Political peace in Europe has historically been elusive and ephemeral. Stella Ghervas shows that since the eighteenth century, European thinkers and leaders in pursuit of lasting peace fostered the idea of European unification.Bridging intellectual and political history, Ghervas draws on the work of philosophers from Abbé de Saint-Pierre, who wrote an early eighteenth-century plan for perpetual peace, to Rousseau and Kant, as well as statesmen such as Tsar Alexander I, Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, Robert Schuman, and Mikhail Gorbachev. She locates five major conflicts since 1700 that spurred such visionaries to promote systems of peace in Europe: the War of the Spanish Succession, the Napoleonic Wars, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. Each moment generated a "spirit" of peace among monarchs, diplomats, democratic leaders, and ordinary citizens. The engineers of peace progressively constructed mechanisms and institutions designed to prevent future wars.Arguing for continuities from the ideals of the Enlightenment, through the nineteenth-century Concert of Nations, to the institutions of the European Union and beyond, Conquering Peace illustrates how peace as a value shaped the idea of a unified Europe long before the EU came into being. Today the EU is widely criticized as an obstacle to sovereignty and for its democratic deficit. Seen in the long-range perspective of the history of peacemaking, however, this European society of states emerges as something else entirely: a step in the quest for a less violent world.Stella Ghervas is Professor of Russian History at Newcastle University (UK) and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She is also an Associate of the History Department at Harvard University and Visiting Professor at Harvard Summer School since 2015. Her main interests are in intellectual and international history of modern Europe, with special reference to the history of peace and peace-making, and in Russia’s intellectual and maritime history.She is the author of Alexandre Stourdza (1791-1854): Un intellectuel orthodoxe face à l’Occident (1999), Réinventer la tradition: Alexandre Stourdza et l’Europe de la Sainte-Alliance (which won several book prizes, including the Guizot Prize from the Académie Française, 2008) and Conquering Peace: From the Enlightenment to the European Union (2021), and the editor of Penser l’Europe – Quarante ans d’études européennes à Genève (2003), Lieux d’Europe: Mythes et limites (2008) and A Cultural History of Peace in the Age of Enlightenment (Bloomsburg, with David Armitage, 2020).Her website is at https://www.ghervas.net/ and you can follow her on Twitter @StellaGhervasSteven Seegel, Professor of History, University of Northern ColoradoMaphead, Founding Board @H__Ukraine, Borderologist, Translator for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Podcast Host, Proud Slow Runner, Dog Valet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs