A “fascinating” journey to little-known and contested lands around the globe, from Tibet to the Isle of Man to Elgaland-Vargaland (Geographical Magazine). What is a country? Acclaimed travel writer and Oxford geography don Nick Middleton brings to life the origins and histories of fifty states that, lacking international recognition and United Nations membership, exist on the margins of legitimacy in the global order. From long-contested lands like Crimea and Tibet to lesser-known territories such as Africa’s last colony and a European republic that enjoyed independence for a single day, Middleton presents fascinating stories of shifting borders, visionary leaders, and “forgotten” peoples. “Engrossing . . . You’ll not find Middle-earth, Atlantis or Lilliput inside, but you will find something just as intriguing . . . sure to prompt discussions about what makes a country a ‘real country.’” —Seattle Times

Do we need the United Nations? Where would the contemporary world be without its largest intergovernmental organization? And where could it be had the UN’s member states and staff performed better? These fundamental questions are explored by the leading analyst of UN history and politics, Thomas G. Weiss, in this hard-hitting, authoritative book. While counterfactuals are often dismissed as academic contrivances, they can serve to focus the mind; and here, Weiss uses them to ably demonstrate the pluses and minuses of multilateral cooperation. He is not shy about UN achievements and failures drawn from its ideas and operations in its three substantive pillars of activities: international peace and security; human rights and humanitarian action; and sustainable development. But, he argues, the inward-looking and populist movements in electoral politics worldwide make robust multilateralism more not less compelling. The selection of António Guterres as the ninth UN secretary-general should rekindle critical thinking about the potential for international cooperation. There is a desperate need to reinvigorate and update rather than jettison the United Nations in responding to threats from climate change to pandemics, from proliferation to terrorism. Weiss tells you why and how.

A Pulitzer Prize–winning historian’s "breathtakingly original" (Junot Diaz) reinterpretation of the eight decades surrounding the Civil War. "Capatious [and] buzzing with ideas." --The Boston Globe Volume 3 in the Penguin History of the United States, edited by Eric Foner In this ambitious story of American imperial conquest and capitalist development, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Steven Hahn takes on the conventional histories of the nineteenth century and offers a perspective that promises to be as enduring as it is controversial. It begins and ends in Mexico and, throughout, is internationalist in orientation. It challenges the political narrative of “sectionalism,” emphasizing the national footing of slavery and the struggle between the northeast and Mississippi Valley for continental supremacy. It places the Civil War in the context of many domestic rebellions against state authority, including those of Native Americans. It fully incorporates the trans-Mississippi west, suggesting the importance of the Pacific to the imperial vision of political leaders and of the west as a proving ground for later imperial projects overseas. It reconfigures the history of capitalism, insisting on the centrality of state formation and slave emancipation to its consolidation. And it identifies a sweeping era of “reconstructions” in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that simultaneously laid the foundations for corporate liberalism and social democracy. The era from 1830 to 1910 witnessed massive transformations in how people lived, worked, thought about themselves, and struggled to thrive. It also witnessed the birth of economic and political institutions that still shape our world. From an agricultural society with a weak central government, the United States became an urban and industrial society in which government assumed a greater and greater role in the framing of social and economic life. As the book ends, the United States, now a global economic and political power, encounters massive warfare between imperial powers in Europe and a massive revolution on its southern border―the remarkable Mexican Revolution―which together brought the nineteenth century to a close while marking the important themes of the twentieth.

Underlying Julia Kristeva's latest work is the idea that otherness - whether it be ethnic, religious, social, or political - needs to be understood and accepted in order to guarantee social harmony. Nations Without Nationalism is an impassioned plea for tolerance and for commonality, aimed at a world brimming over with racism and xenophobia. Responding to the rise of neo-Nazi groups in Germany and Eastern Europe and the continued popularity of the National Front in France, Kristeva turns to the origins of the nation-state to illustrate the problematic nature of nationalism and its complex configurations in subsequent centuries. For Kristeva, the key to commonality can be found in Montesquieu's esprit general - his notion of the social body as a guaranteed hierarchy of private rights. Nations Without Nationalism also contains Kristeva's thoughts on Harlem Desir, the founder of the antiracist organization SOS Racisme; the links between psychoanalysis and nationalism; the historical nature of French national identity; the relationship between esprit general and Volksgeist; Charles de Gaulle's complex ideas involving the "nation" and his dream of a unified Europe. In the tradition of Strangers to Ourselves, her most recent nonfiction work, Nations Without Nationalism reflects a passionate commitment to enlightenment and social justice. As ethnic strife persists in Europe and the United States, Kristeva's humanistic message carries with it a special resonance and urgency.

What authority does international law really have for the United States? When and to what extent should the United States participate in the international legal system? This forcefully argued book by legal scholar Jeremy Rabkin provides an insightful new look at this important and much-debated question. Americans have long asked whether the United States should join forces with institutions such as the International Criminal Court and sign on to agreements like the Kyoto Protocol. Rabkin argues that the value of international agreements in such circumstances must be weighed against the threat they pose to liberties protected by strong national authority and institutions. He maintains that the protection of these liberties could be fatally weakened if we go too far in ceding authority to international institutions that might not be zealous in protecting the rights Americans deem important. Similarly, any cessation of authority might leave Americans far less attached to the resulting hybrid legal system than they now are to laws they can regard as their own. Law without Nations? traces the traditional American wariness of international law to the basic principles of American thought and the broader traditions of liberal political thought on which the American Founders drew: only a sovereign state can make and enforce law in a reliable way, so only a sovereign state can reliably protect the rights of its citizens. It then contrasts the American experience with that of the European Union, showing the difficulties that can arise from efforts to merge national legal systems with supranational schemes. In practice, international human rights law generates a cloud of rhetoric that does little to secure human rights, and in fact, is at odds with American principles, Rabkin concludes. A challenging and important contribution to the current debates about the meaning of multilateralism and international law, Law without Nations? will appeal to a broad cross-section of scholars in both the legal and political science arenas.

Is it possible to create a borderless world? How might it be better equipped to solve the global emergencies threatening our collective survival? Build Bridges, Not Walls is an inspiring, impassioned call to envision–and work toward–a bold new reality. "Todd Miller cuts through the facile media myths and escapes the paralyzing constraints of a political ‘debate’ that functions mainly to obscure the unconscionable inequalities that borders everywhere secure. In its soulfulness, its profound moral imagination, and its vision of radical solidarity, Todd Miller’s work is as indispensable as the love that so palpably guides it."—Ben Ehrenreich, author of Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time "The stories of the humble people of the earth Miller documents ask us to also tear down the walls in our hearts and in our heads. What proliferates in the absence of these walls and in spite of them, Miller writes, is the natural state of things centered on kindness and compassion."—Nick Estes, author of Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance By the time Todd Miller spots him, Juan Carlos has been wandering alone in a remote border region for days. Parched, hungry and disoriented, he approaches and asks for a ride. Miller’s instinct is to oblige, but he hesitates: Furthering an unauthorized person’s entrance into the U.S. is a federal crime. Todd Miller has been reporting from international border zones for over twenty-five years. In Build Bridges, Not Walls, he invites readers to join him on a journey that begins with the most basic of questions: What happens to our collective humanity when the impulse to help one another is criminalized? A series of encounters–with climate refugees, members of indigenous communities, border authorities, modern-day abolitionists, scholars, visionaries, and the shape-shifting imagination of his four-year-old son–provoke a series of reflections on the ways in which nation-states create the problems that drive immigration, and how the abolition of borders could make the world a more sustainable, habitable place for all. Praise for Build Bridges, Not Walls: "Todd Miller’s deeply reported, empathetic writing on the American border is some of the most essential journalism being done today. As this book reveals, the militarization of our border is a simmering crisis that harms vulnerable people every day. It’s impossible to read his work without coming away changed."—Adam Conover, creator and host of Adam Ruins Everything and host of Factually! "All of Todd Miller’s work is essential reading, but Build Bridges, Not Walls is his most compelling, insightful work yet."—Dean Spade, author of Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crises (And the Next) "Miller calls us to see how borders subject millions of people to violence, dehumanization, and early death. More importantly, he highlights the urgent necessity to abolish not only borders, but the nation-state itself."—A. Naomi Paik, author of Bans, Walls Raids, Sanctuary: Understanding U.S. Immigration for the Twenty-First Century and Rightlessness: Testimony and Redress in U.S. Prison Camps Since World War II "Miller lays bare the senselessness and soullessness of the nation-state and its borders and border walls, and reimagines, in their place, a complete and total restoration, therefore redemption, of who we are, and of who we are in desperate need of becoming."—Brandon Shimoda, author of The Grave on the Wall "Miller’s latest book is a personal, wide-ranging, and impassioned call for abolishing borders."—John Washington, author of The Dispossessed: A Story of Asylum and the US-Mexican Border and Beyond