"Mr. Ford, a clear and lively writer, probes and prods and provokes as he steers his way through this contested terrain. He takes dead aim at racial opportunists, opponents of affirmative action, multiculturalists and the myriad rights organizations trying to hitch a ride on the successes of the black civil rights movement. All, in different ways, he argues, are playing the race card. All are harming the cause of civil rights."—William Grimes, The New York Times

“Here is a book from a leading scholar that cuts through the ignorance, the denial, and the prejudice to explain how we got stuck with a policy that was doomed to fail. Our military and our nation owe Frank a debt of gratitude.”—Dr. Lawrence J. Korb, former Assistant Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan

"When the Soviet Union chucked Sputnik into space in 1957, it galvanized America to come from behind and win the space race. The federal government opened its checkbook to finance an array of projects. Students shifted to new subjects like astronautical engineering and Russian studies to help the United States understand and eclipse the Soviet Union. The moon shot inspired a patriotic nation and produced useful commercial technologies along the way. The space race was expensive, but it worked. Thomas L. Friedman’s latest book is a plea for a new Sputnik moment. His breezy tour of America’s energy policy documents a nation that has become dangerously dependent on fossil fuels . . . Mr. Friedman’s voice is compelling and will be widely heard . . . Mr. Friedman’s strength is his diagnosis of our energy and environmental nightmares . . . The most intriguing chapter in Mr. Friedman’s book is his last, which poses the toughest challenge. Can America be like China, where a visionary government can impose a new direction on the country in the face of national emergency? Or will America devolve into a country that is so mired in red tape and local opposition that it builds absolutely nothing anywhere, near anything? Societies like that get stuck because they can’t embrace new technologies, like the cherished wind turbines and the power lines needed to carry their current . . . Heads will be nodding across airport lounges, as readers absorb Mr. Friedman’s common sense about how America and the world are dangerously addicted to cheap fossil fuels while we recklessly use the atmosphere as a dumping ground for carbon dioxide. The Sputnik is heading into orbit, thanks to high energy prices, growing fear of the changing climate and pleas like Mr. Friedman’s. But whether we as a nation—and with us, the world—are really prepared to do anything to solve the problem is still in doubt."—David Victor, The New York Times

"For today's readers, what's most important about Lessons in Disaster is not the details of how the United States stumbled into a war without knowing where it was going; that story has been told in hundreds of other books. Goldstein's achievement is quite different: it offers insight into how Bundy, a man of surpassing skill and reputation, could have advised two presidents so badly. On the long shelf of Vietnam books, I know of nothing quite like it."—Richard Holbrooke, The New York Times Book Review

“In this small, profoundly sensible book, Gordon questions the entire intellectual edifice of the ‘war on terror’ and offers an alternative strategy of containment and engagement . . . Gordon argues that the language of war evokes the wrong strategic imagery, mischaracterizing the nature of the enemy, the causes of terrorism, and what the appropriate tools of the struggle are . . . A glimmer of the United States’ next grand strategy appears in these pages.”—Foreign Affairs

"The Americans who engineered countless military coups, death squads and massacres in Latin America never paid for their crimes—instead they got promoted and they're now running the 'War on Terror.' Grandin had always been a brilliant historian, now he uses those detective skills in a book that is absolutely crucial to understanding our present."—Naomi Klein, author of No Logo

"'Modern politics is a chapter in the history of religion,' Gray, a British philosopher, insists in this outspoken attack on utopianism and the ‘faith-based violence’ it has inspired. History, Gray writes, offers no new dawns or sharp breaks, and, from the French Revolution to the war on terror, he is as critical of the humanist belief in progress as of the ‘belligerent optimism’ of neoconservatives. Sketching the roots of utopianism, he emphasizes the similarities between seemingly disparate movements: radical Islam, he suggests, might best be thought of as ‘Islamo-Jacobinism.’ Taking the Iraq war as an object lesson, he argues for an acknowledgment that the ‘local pieties of Atlantic democracy’ are not the only way to govern. Gray’s writing has a bracing clarity."—The New Yorker

"Greider's moment . . . may have arrived. Given the current, gloomy circumstances, all neatly summarized here, it's more difficult than ever to argue with his analysis, and he's surely correct that 'in crisis lies opportunity' . . . With the time's propitious and unprecedented organizing tools (the Internet, especially) readily available, the people may finally be sufficiently aroused—in the manner of the late 19th-century Populists and the early New Dealers—to demand accountability from a system that has failed them. If they do, historians may point to this book as one of the prairie fire's first sparks. Astute, hopeful and humane commentary."—Kirkus Reviews

"Harding . . . vividly tells the story of the birth over the past three decades of modern campaign consulting firms, notably the Sawyer Miller Group, a firm that started with noble intent and ended in cynicism. Harding is a man of learning, so there is a historical frame of reference, a perspective on how those who set out to educate citizens came to manipulate them both here and abroad. But what makes this story come alive are the characters: those who speak of their early hopes and of their later depravity; those who quit and those whose lives end in tragedy; those who know they have had a pernicious effect on politics; and those in designer suits who don't have a clue or don't much care.”—Ken Auletta

"Harrowing. The reader is drawn in, in effect eavesdropping on a casual conversation among killers . . . Readers who can get beyond their (justified) initial horror will find a wealth of detail here about the genocide."—Alison Des Forges, The Washington Post Book World

"'Why keep on?' asks Claudine Kayitesi, a Tutsi survivor living in relative peace in Nyamata, Rwanda. Her question is not a philosophical one, though that would be understandable given what she has experienced—rape, displacement, the murder of a sister and many others. Rather, her query is directed at the persistent questions of the French journalist Jean Hatzfeld, who has returned to the war-torn landscape he wrote about in two previous books, The Machete Season and Life Laid Bare, to speak again to survivors and perpetrators of the 1994 genocide. Why Hatzfeld keeps on asking questions is among the many thought-provoking issues at the heart of his new book, The Antelope's Strategy. Seven years after his reporting for Machete Season, Hatzfeld finds a much-changed Rwanda: The terrors of war have been replaced by an awkward—and sometimes dangerous—atmosphere of forced reconciliation. Some Hutu prisoners have been released or have returned from exile to live among the families of those they killed. 'Not one prisoner came asking for forgiveness,' says Kayitesi. A Hutu ex-convict notes, 'I was charged, I was convicted, I was pardoned. I did not ask to be forgiven.' Hatzfeld captures this tension gracefully, weaving lengthy interview excerpts with his own artfully written observations. The result is a book that illustrates vividly the thorny realities that accompany survival and appeasement. 'People are living peacefully, but actually they are avoiding one another,' Kayitesi comments in the book's final pages. 'We'll be humble and nice, we'll share, we'll cooperate as we should. But believing them is unthinkable.'"—Nora Krug, The Washington Post

“Timothy Henderson has a gift for writing history. The individuals, the battles, and the results remain the same, but his narrative has a fresh, exciting quality. His engrossing history will hold the attention of undergraduate students and grizzled experts. He has written the best short history available.”—William H. Beezley, Professor of History, University of Arizona

“Thank God (although after reading this book you might stop believing in a higher power) for James Hider.  After working as a reporter on all the major frontlines of the War on Terror, he has produced a masterpiece that strips away the propaganda and prejudice that blights analysis of the first global conflict of the 21st Century.  It is a work of great authority written with wit and wisdom.”—Tim Butcher, author of Blood River

“Jacobson said, 'The 9/11 Commission Report basically told its own story. In doing the research for After 9/11 . . . I recognized how much of what’s happened over the past six and a half years hasn’t really stayed with us. One function of the book, we hope, will be to help readers remember' . . . In addition to providing a vividly comprehensible time line, After 9/11 makes intelligible—in a way that even an overtaxed Presidential candidate can grasp—the tribal and religious-factional complexities within Iraq and Afghanistan.”—Mark Singer, The New Yorker

"When Johnson mines the recent history he has studied and experienced firsthand, the results are bracing . . . Johnson's important new book is something with which anyone who aspires to a worthwhile opinion about this country's future must now contend on terms at least as thoughtful as the author's."—Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times

"Kinzer has written a detailed, passionate and convincing book, several chapters of which have the pace and grip of a good thriller. It should be essential reading for any Americans who wish to understand both their country's historical record in international affairs, and why that record has provoked anger and distrust in much of the world. Most important, it helps explain why, outside of Eastern Europe, American pronouncements about spreading democracy and freedom, as repeatedly employed by the Bush administration, are met with widespread incredulity."—Anatol Lieven, The New York Times Book Review