One war: three collisions--in this vividly written, narrative history of the war in Ukraine, Michael Kimmage puts together the pieces of a complicated international puzzle to understand the origins of the current conflict that has brought the world to the brink of a new Cold War. In Collisions, Michael Kimmage, a historian and former State Department official who focused on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, offers a wide-angle, historically informed account of the origins of the current Russia-Ukraine war. Tracing the development of Ukraine and Russia's fractious relationship back to the end of the Cold War, Kimmage takes readers through the central events that led to Vladimir Putin seizing a large portion of Ukraine--the Crimea--in 2014 and, eight years later, initiating arguably the most intensive military conflict of the entire post-World War II era. From the halls of power in Washington, Kyiv, and Moscow to the battlefields of Ukraine, Kimmage chronicles Putin's ascendency to the Russian presidency, delves into multiple American presidencies and their dealings with Russia and Europe, and recounts Europe's efforts to incorporate Ukraine into the European Union. He tells the story of how Ukraine went from an embattled country on the edge of Europe to a formidable military power capable of pushing back the Russian military. Just as importantly, Kimmage captures how the current war has transformed multiple great powers--including the EU, the US, and China--and dramatically altered the path of globalization itself. He makes the case that the war in Ukraine has shifted the direction of major macro-trends in world politics, contributing to the rise of China, higher inflation, and the general collapse of arms control. These intersecting dangers amount to a new age of global instability, born in war and in the collision between Russia and the United States that has brought the world to the brink of a new Cold War. An authoritative interpretation of possibly the most important geopolitical event of the post-Cold War era, Collisions is essential reading for anyone interested in the origins of this epochal conflict and its ripple effects across the globe.

Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability

History

Kimmage, Michael

Russia

Oxford University Press

This definitive portrait of American diplomacy reveals how the concept of the West drove twentieth-century foreign policy, how it fell from favor, and why it is worth saving.Throughout the twentieth century, many Americans saw themselves as part of Western civilization, and Western ideals of liberty and self-government guided American diplomacy. But today, other ideas fill this role: on one side, a technocratic "liberal international order," and on the other, the illiberal nationalism of "America First." In The Abandonment of the West, historian Michael Kimmage shows how the West became the dominant idea in US foreign policy in the first half of the twentieth century -- and how that consensus has unraveled. We must revive the West, he argues, to counter authoritarian challenges from Russia and China. This is an urgent portrait of modern America's complicated origins, its emergence as a superpower, and the crossroads at which it now stands.

The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy

Business & Money

Economics

Basic Books

The Conservative Turn tells the story of postwar America’s political evolution through two fascinating figures: Lionel Trilling and Whittaker Chambers. Born at the turn of the twentieth century, they were college classmates who went on to intellectual prominence, sharing the questions, crises, and challenges of their generation. 
A spy for the Soviet Union in the 1930s, Chambers became the main witness in the 1948 trial of Alger Hiss, which ended in Hiss’s conviction for perjury. The trial advanced the careers of Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy and marked the beginning of the Cold War mood in America. Chambers was also a major conservative thinker, a theorist of the postwar conservative movement.
Meanwhile, in the 1940s and 1950s, the literary critic Trilling wrote important essays that encouraged liberals to disown their radical past and to embrace a balanced maturity. Trilling’s liberal anti-communism was highly influential, culminating politically in the presidency of John F. Kennedy. 
Kimmage argues that the divergent careers of these two men exemplify important developments in postwar American politics: the emergence of modern conservatism and the rise of moderate liberalism, crucially shaped by anti-communism. Taken together, these developments constitute a conservative turn in American political and intellectual life―a turn that continues to shape America’s political landscape.

The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers, and the Lessons of Anti-Communism (Harvard Historical Studies)

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Harvard University Press

In History's Grip concentrates on the literature of Philip Roth, one of America's greatest writers, and in particular on American Pastoral, I Married a Communist, and The Human Stain. Each of these novels from the 1990s uses Newark, New Jersey, to explore American history and character. Each features a protagonist who grows up in and then leaves Newark, after which he is undone by a historically generated crisis. The city's twentieth-century decline from immigrant metropolis to postindustrial disaster completes the motif of history and its terrifying power over individual destiny. In History's Grip is the first critical study to foreground the city of Newark as the source of Roth's inspiration, and to scrutinize a subject Roth was accused of avoiding as a younger writer―history. In so doing, the book brings together the two halves of Roth's decades-long career: the first featuring characters who live outside of history's grip; the second, characters entrapped in historical patterns beyond their ken and control.

In History's Grip: Philip Roth's Newark Trilogy (Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture)

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Stanford University Press

Amerikafahrt by Wolfgang Koeppen is a masterpiece of observation, analysis, and writing, based on his 1958 trip to the United States. A major twentieth-century German writer, Koeppen presents a vivid and fascinating portrait of the US in the late 1950s: its major cities, its literary culture, its troubled race relations, its multi-culturalism and its vast loneliness, a motif drawn, in part, from Kafka’s Amerika. A modernist travelogue, the text employs symbol, myth, and image, as if Koeppen sought to answer de Tocqueville’s questions in the manner of Joyce and Kafka. Journey through America is also a meditation on America, intended for a German audience and mindful of the destiny of postwar Europe under many Americanizing influences.

Journey Through America (Transatlantic Perspectives, 1)

Koeppen, Wolfgang

Americas

Berghahn Books

"A Meteor of Intelligent Substance" "Something was Missing in our Culture, and Here It Is" Liberties - A Journal of Culture and Politics features new essays and poetry from some of the world's best writers and artists to inspire and impact the intellectual and creative lifeblood of our current culture and today's politics. This summer issue of Liberties includes: Elliot Ackerman on Veterans Are Not Victims; Durs Grünbein on Fascism and the Writer; R.B. Kitaj's Three Tales; Thomas Chatterton Williams on The Blessings of Assimilation; Anita Shapira on The Fall of Israel's House of Labor; Sally Satel on Woke Medicine; Matthew Stephenson On Corruption's Honey and Poison; Helen Vender on Wallace Stevens; David Haziza on Illusions of Immunity; Paul Berman on the Library of America; Clara Collier's nostalgia for strong women in film; Michael Kimmage on American Inquisitions; Leon Wieseltier (editor) on the high price of Stoicism; Celeste Marcus (managing editor) on a Native American Tragedy; and new poetry from Adam Zagajewski, A.E. Stallings, and Peg Boyers.

Liberties Journal of Culture and Politics: Volume I, Issue 4

Ackerman, Elliot

Vendler, Helen

Stephenson, Matthew

BERMAN, PAUL

Grünbein, Durs

Collier, Clara

Zagajewski, Adam

Williams, Thomas Chatterton

Shapira, Anita

Satel, Sally

Stallings, A.E.

Kitaj, R.B.

Haziza, David

Boyers, Peg

Arts & Photography

Liberties Journal

"A Meteor of Intelligent Substance" "Something was Missing in our Culture, and Here It Is""Liberties is THE place to be. Change starts in the mind." Liberties, a journal of Culture and Politics, is essential reading for those engaged in the cultural and political issues and causes of our time. Liberties features serious, independent, stylish, and controversial essays by significant writers and leaders throughout the world; new poetry; and, introduces the next generation of writers and voices to inspire and impact the intellectual and creative lifeblood of today's culture and politics.In this issue of Liberties, highlights include: Martha C. Nussbaum on not hating the body; David Nirenberg and Ricardo Nirenberg explain what numbers cannot capture; Maria Stepanova on living out of time during Covid; Pratap Mehta on India's Voltaire; Michael Kimmage on American rise of decline; Nicholas Lemann on gaining his religion; Samuel Moyn on rights v. duties in contemporary liberalism; William Deresiewicz analyzes our culture's obsession with origin stories; Alastair Macaulay on Merce Cunningam's singular beauty and importance; Helen Vendler on the tormented life of Gerard Manley Hopkins; Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn on ancient philosophy as self-help; Philip Kitcher on the cost of pre-professionalization at college campuses; Celeste Marcus on The Night Porter as a love story; Leon Wieseltier on Art, Politics, And Confusion; and, new poems by Andrew Motion, Collin Channer, and Aaron Fagan.

Liberties Journal of Culture and Politics: Volume II, Issue 2

MOTION, Andrew

Lemann, Nicholas

Moyn, Samuel

Kitcher, Philip

Nussbaum, Martha C.

Deresiewicz, William

Stepanova, Maria

Nirenberg, David

Mehta, Pratap Bhanu

Fagan, Aaron

Macaulay, Alastair

Quinn, Elisabeth Lasch

Channer, Collin

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