My new book, "The Rivalry Peril" is out!!!

This post is very overdue....

I must once again apologize for neglecting this newsletter. Teaching, writing, and family responsibilities occupied most of my time over the fall, and they have only increased in the winter. But I aim to give this Substack greater attention in the coming months. Here is my first attempt at making amends with it, and you. Yes, this is a promotional post, but I have several original pieces in progress for Warfare and Welfare. Stay tuned.

This is a much delayed post, but my new book co-authored with Van Jackson, The Rivalry Peril: How Great-Power Competition Threatens Peace and Weakens Democracy is now out!! You can buy the book by clicking here. The book was officially released on Tuesday, January 28th, and we have been very pleased with the reception so far. It was even a number one new release on Amazon for a few days!

The book is over two years in the making, and if I may say so, makes a nuanced argument about how and why the United States remains fixated on great-power competition with China, and why rivalry with China is counterproductive to sustaining democracy and creating prosperity for all. It is both a history of the Cold War and an assessment of how the Cold War lives on in U.S. foreign policy. It is a collaboration between a historian (me) and a political scientist (Van), which is becoming all too rare in the profession. The book is also unique in the sense that we wrote it with a broad audience in mind. We hope that it finds a readership with policymakers (in Washington, D.C. but globally too), academics, and the broader public interested in the history and future of U.S. foreign policy. Judging by the emails in our inbox and our direct messages, we are succeeding on this front. Nothing makes an author more fulfilled to know that your work resonates with people.

Van and I launched the book with an essay in Foreign Affairs on Donald Trump and the “age of nationalism,” which you can read here. A portion of chapter 4 was also excerpted in Foreign Policy magazine with the title, “How Great-Power Rivalry Hurts Ordinary Americans.” This chapter addressed how great-power competition will not provide economic growth for all—only a few—and will, in fact, exacerbate inequality. You can read that excerpt here.

Thanks for reading and for supporting my—and in this case, Van’s—work! I appreciate it. Let me know if you buy the book, and what you think of it.

More soon!