New Books in World Affairs

Thanks in no small part to John K. Thornton, professor of history at Boston University, the field of Atlantic history has emerged as one of the most exciting fields of historical research over the past quarter century. Thornton has long insisted that the the age of discovery fostered linkages between the Americas, Europe, and Africa that transformed the diverse peoples of all three regions. Europeans did not simply impose their will upon Africans and Native Americans. A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250-1820 (Cambridge University Press, 2012) showcases Thornton’s deep research in the primary source material of multiple nationalities — and languages — to provide the most comprehensive interpretation we have of how the first era of globalization transformed the cultures of all the peoples of the Atlantic basin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

This cat has a complicated history. In addition to filling stationery stores across the globe with cute objects festooned with little whiskers and bowties, Hello Kitty has inspired tributes from Lisa Loeb and Lady Gaga, and artistic renderings from Hello Kitty Nativity to Hello (Sex) Kitty: Mad Asian Bitch on Wheels. In Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek across the Pacific (Duke University Press, 2013), Christine Yano offers a fascinating study of Hello Kitty as a global commodity and “world idol.” Focusing on the period from 1998-present, the book considers the iconic spread and transformation of Sanrio’s character in the context of marketing strategies based on creating an ideal of “happiness” sustained through gift-mediated sociality and the production of nostalgia. Yano considers the Hello Kitty phenomenon as a process of “pink globalization” in which Kitty becomes a cultural “wink,” an invitation to play, a friend, a mediator of the realms of childhood and adult desire. The narrative is grounded in a series of ethnographic accounts of fans and critics of the global icon, including artists, collectors, Sanrio employees, and others. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Joseph Nye‘s latest book is Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era (Princeton University Press, 2013). Professor Nye is University Distinguished Professor and former dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy. Nye’s long career and major contributions to scholarship on international relations and American foreign policy make this new book a welcome new publication. He reaches some surprising conclusions about how to judge the leadership of former US presidents in the international arena. He writes “I conclude below that some presidents matter, but not always the ones who are most dramatic or inspiring” and continues “I found to my surprise that while transformational presidents like Woodrow Wilson and Ronald Reagan changed how Americans see the world, transactional presidents like Dwight Eisenhower and George H. W. Bush were sometimes more effective and more ethical. I would not have come to this unconventional conclusion before I undertook this study.” It is these surprises that make this such a great read. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Throughout the centuries, in cultures around the world, people have played games. But it has only been in the modern age, in the last 250 years or so, that people have competed in and watched sports. Modern sports are distinct in practice and purpose from the ball games of Mayan Central America or the chaotic scrums of medieval European villages. Historians have specified these traits and plumbed their origins, typically finding the hearth in England of the 18th and 19th centuries. What was it about England that gave rise to modern sport? Was it the emerging political liberty and notions of rights? The freedom of men to join clubs and associations, or the expansion of the popular press? Was it the decline of feudalism after the revolutionary events of the 1600s, or even the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, who posited that all of life is competition? Tony Collins points to all of these factors as significant for the birth of modern sport in England. But at the root of all this, the fundamental driver of sport’s development, then as now, has been money. Tony’s book, Sport in Capitalist Society: A Short History (Routledge, 2013), shows how the drive for profit has been central to modern sport, in England and around the world, from the 18th-century gentlemen who instituted uniform rules for various competitions to ensure fairness for their betting, to the gentlemen of today who exchange billions in media contracts, franchise fees, and stadium deals. The book is more than the work of a scholar who has spent two decades researching the history of sport. Along with his colleagues at the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at DeMontfort University, Tony took part in the production of a BBC Radio 4 series on the history of British sport, to accompany the 2012 London Olympics. As he explains in the interview, the three-year process of writing the series prompted much discussion among the center’s scholars and brought new clarity to his own interpretations. There are few writers on sport who can move convincingly from one continent to another, but Tony does it with insight and eloquence. His short history hits far above its weight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Two guys are watching Premier League highlights, when onto the TV screen comes Rory Delap, then with Stoke City, doing one of his renowned throw-ins from the touchline directly into the box. One guy, a native of the American Midwest who’d been raised on baseball, basketball, and hockey, is amazed by the throw and the havoc it creates in front of the opponent’s goal. “Why don’t other teams do that?” he asks. The other guy, who grew up with soccer in Germany, explains that Delap is an unusual player, having been trained as a javelin thrower. “But can’t teams train a guy to make throws like that?” asks the first guy. “It’s not what you do unless you have to,” answers the second guy, who had played semi-pro soccer in his younger days. “Well, why not? It seems to work for them.” The former footballer is stymied for an answer. All he can say is: “Because.” In most cases, a debate like this would have ended here, with the guy with superior sports credentials having the final word. But these guys were Ivy League professors, who do research in behavioral social sciences. Instead of accepting “because” as an explanation for soccer customs, they began to question the behavior of clubs, managers, and even players, and to research the real outcomes of their decisions. In their book The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Soccer Is Wrong (Penguin, 2013), these two guys, Chris Anderson and David Sally, offer the results of their investigations. Using the wealth of data that is now available about what happens on the field, and drawing from current theories in the social sciences, they undermine many of the conventions of on-field strategy and club management. Their book brings together colorful stories and telling statistics in an engaging and insightful dissection of contemporary soccer. You’ll be surprised to learn that much of what you knew about soccer is indeed wrong. And as Chris and Dave admit in the interview, so were they. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

At the end of the 20th century, it looked like history was being made. After a century that had seen Europe dissolve into an orgy of bloody conflict not once but twice, the continent seemed to have changed its ways. It had spent the second half of the century building a system of shared sovereignty that was set to expand not just into the countries of the former Soviet bloc, but into what used to be the USSR itself. In the words of one author, Europe (or at least its model) was about to run the  21st century. Things look different now, of course, thanks to the impact of the financial crisis on the single currency, the euro. However  the European Union (as the project is currently named) has managed to burnish its image in some areas – for instance it now on the verge of covering 28 countries, and even managed to pick up a Nobel Peace Prize (somewhat controversially, although after the first half of the 20th century its role in keeping Europe largely at peace is certainly laudable). The project that lies at the heart of this is the subject of Luuk van Middelaar‘s The Passage to Europe: How a Continent Became a Union (Yale University Press, 2013). It’s not a history book as such, but more a book of political philosophy, that knits together a series of concepts, challenges, and constructs, that together have formed something that in the dark days of the immediate post-War period seemed a long, long way away. As such, it’s rather an important book. The continent and the European project have both been riven by crises over the last half decade, and some of the achievements Brussels can point to are now seriously threatened. Luuk – who has had a ringside seat of the crisis as the speechwriter for President Herman van Rompuy – has a look at the underpinnings that go beyond the immediate debates, and the insights this provides will no doubt play a role in shaping the European project (whatever it becomes) in decades to come. Enjoy the interview! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

It’s getting warmer, there ain’t no doubt about it. What are we going to do? Most folks say we should cut back on bad things like carbon emissions. That would probably be a good idea. The trouble is we would have to cut back on all the good things that carbon emissions produce, like big houses, cool cars, and tasty food imported from far-away places. We don’t want to do that. So what’s a global citizen to do? One idea is to take control of the environment, engineering-wise. Why cut back when we can simply manage the carbon-cycle a bit like we manage the climate in hothouses? In Earthmasters: The Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering(Yale UP, 2013), Clive Hamilton surveys the proposals big-thinking engineers have dreamed up to control the carbon-cycle on a truly massive scale. Some are wacky, others less so, but all are, well, very bold. Does any of it make sense? Can any of it be done? Hamilton investigates. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

It’s a classic historical question: Why the West and not the Rest? Answers abound. So is there anything new to say about it? According to Prasannan Parthasarathi, there certainly is. He doesn’t go so far as to say that other proposed explanations are flat out wrong, it’s just that they don’t really focus on the narrow forces that, well, forced English business men to innovate in the 18th century. In Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Economic Divergence, 1600-1850 (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Parthasarathi says that those forces were economic. English textile merchants were getting trounced by imported Indian cotton. They found that they couldn’t produce cotton goods in the same way the Indians did for all kinds of reasons. So, they had to create a new, more efficient, production process. They did. According to Parthasarath, the “Industrial Revolution” was born out of economic competition and innovation (with, of course, a helping hand from the state). That makes a lot of sense. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Terrorism seems like the kind of thing that has existed since the beginning of states some 5,000 years ago. Understood in one, narrow way–as what we call “insurgency”–it probably has. But modern terrorism is, well, modern as Martin A. Miller explains in The Foundations of Modern Terrorism: State, Society, and the Dynamics of Political Violence (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Miller traces our kind of terrorism to the French Revolution or thereabouts, and specifically to the formation of the idea that “citizens” have a right (and indeed duty) to rebel against their wayward governments “by any means necessary.” Take that notion and another–that there are several different “legitimate” ways to organize governments–and you have modern terrorism: campaigns designed to change or overthrow governments that are deemed by political radicals to be acting illegitimately or to be wholly illegitimate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

What do Margaret Thatcher, Ayatollah Khomeini, Deng Xiaoping, and Pope John Paul II have in common? At first thought, you wouldn’t think much. But according to Christian Caryl, they were all radicals who began to change the world in 1979. In Strange Rebels:1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century (Basic Books, 2013), Caryl argues that these very different people from these very different places were brought together by one thing: a belief that the future would not be secular and socialist (as most of the old-line socialist and liberal establishment thought), but rather religious and capitalist. The Marxist project in all its forms, they said, had failed. People did not abandon their faiths, nor did they accept socialist economies. They wanted to worship and they wanted to be free. Thatcher, Khomeini, Xiaoping, and John Paul’s reactionary revolution, as it turned out, was successful. We live in the world they helped create. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs