Peaceful War is an epic analysis of the unfolding drama between the clashing forces of the Chinese dream and American destiny. Just as the American experiment evolved, Deng Xiaoping’s China has been using “Hamiltonian means to Jeffersonian ends” and borrowed the idea of the American Dream as a model for China’s rise. The Chinese dream, as reinvented by President Xi Jinping, continues Deng’s experiment into the twenty-first century. With a possible “fiscal cliff” in America and a “social cliff” in China, the author revisits the history of Sino-American relations to explore the prospects for a return to the long-forgotten Beijing-Washington love affair launched in the trade-for-peace era. President Barack Obama’s Asia pivot strategy and the new Silk Road plan of President Xi could eventually create a pacific New World Order of peace and prosperity for all. The question is: will China ultimately evolve into a democratic nation by rewriting the American Dream in Chinese characters, and how might this transpire?

While COVID-19 is reshaping our lives, this must-read book for 2021 provides some of the answers to our most pressing global challenges. Unless the world is basically peaceful, we will never get the trust, cooperation and inclusiveness to solve these issues, yet what creates peace is poorly understood. Working on an aid program in one of the most violent places in the world, North East Kivu in the DR Congo, philanthropist and business leader Steve Killelea asked himself, ‘What are the most peaceful nations?’ Unable to find an answer, he created the world’s leading measure of peace, the Global Peace Index, which receives over 16 billion media impressions annually and has become the definitive go to index for heads of state. Steve Killelea then went on to establish world-renowned think tank, the Institute for Economics and Peace. Today its work is used by organisations such as the World Bank, United Nations and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and taught in thousands of university courses around the world. Peace in the Age of Chaos tells of Steve’s personal journey to measure and understand peace. It explores the practical application of his work, which is gathering momentum at a rapid pace. In this time when we are faced with environmental, social and economic challenges, this book shows us a way forward where Positive Peace, described as creating the optimal environment for human potential to flourish, can lead to a paradigm shift in the ways societies can be managed, making them more resilient and better capable of adapting to their changing environments.

The myth of the peace-loving "noble savage" is persistent and pernicious. Indeed, for the last fifty years, most popular and scholarly works have agreed that prehistoric warfare was rare, harmless, unimportant, and, like smallpox, a disease of civilized societies alone. Prehistoric warfare, according to this view, was little more than a ritualized game, where casualties were limited and the effects of aggression relatively mild. Lawrence Keeley's groundbreaking War Before Civilization offers a devastating rebuttal to such comfortable myths and debunks the notion that warfare was introduced to primitive societies through contact with civilization (an idea he denounces as "the pacification of the past"). Building on much fascinating archeological and historical research and offering an astute comparison of warfare in civilized and prehistoric societies, from modern European states to the Plains Indians of North America, War Before Civilization convincingly demonstrates that prehistoric warfare was in fact more deadly, more frequent, and more ruthless than modern war. To support this point, Keeley provides a wide-ranging look at warfare and brutality in the prehistoric world. He reveals, for instance, that prehistorical tactics favoring raids and ambushes, as opposed to formal battles, often yielded a high death-rate; that adult males falling into the hands of their enemies were almost universally killed; and that surprise raids seldom spared even women and children. Keeley cites evidence of ancient massacres in many areas of the world, including the discovery in South Dakota of a prehistoric mass grave containing the remains of over 500 scalped and mutilated men, women, and children (a slaughter that took place a century and a half before the arrival of Columbus). In addition, Keeley surveys the prevalence of looting, destruction, and trophy-taking in all kinds of warfare and again finds little moral distinction between ancient warriors and civilized armies. Finally, and perhaps most controversially, he examines the evidence of cannibalism among some preliterate peoples. Keeley is a seasoned writer and his book is packed with vivid, eye-opening details (for instance, that the homicide rate of prehistoric Illinois villagers may have exceeded that of the modern United States by some 70 times). But he also goes beyond grisly facts to address the larger moral and philosophical issues raised by his work. What are the causes of war? Are human beings inherently violent? How can we ensure peace in our own time? Challenging some of our most dearly held beliefs, Keeley's conclusions are bound to stir controversy.

US foreign policy is undergoing a dire transformation, forever changing America’s place in the world. Institutions of diplomacy and development are bleeding out after deep budget cuts; the diplomats who make America’s deals and protect its citizens around the world are walking out in droves. Offices across the State Department sit empty, while abroad the military-industrial complex has assumed the work once undertaken by peacemakers. We’re becoming a nation that shoots first and asks questions later. In an astonishing journey from the corridors of power in Washington, DC, to some of the most remote and dangerous places on earth—Afghanistan, Somalia, and North Korea among them—acclaimed investigative journalist Ronan Farrow illuminates one of the most consequential and poorly understood changes in American history. His firsthand experience as a former State Department official affords a personal look at some of the last standard bearers of traditional statecraft, including Richard Holbrooke, who made peace in Bosnia and died while trying to do so in Afghanistan. Drawing on recently unearthed documents, and richly informed by rare interviews with whistle-blowers, a warlord, and policymakers—including every living former secretary of state from Henry Kissinger to Hillary Clinton to Rex Tillerson—and now updated with revealing firsthand accounts from inside Donald Trump’s confrontations with diplomats during his impeachment and candid testimonials from officials in Joe Biden’s inner circle, War on Peace makes a powerful case for an endangered profession. Diplomacy, Farrow argues, has declined after decades of political cowardice, shortsightedness, and outright malice—but it may just offer America a way out of a world at war.

Pulitzer Prize­-winning journalist David Halberstam chronicles Washington politics and foreign policy in post­ Cold War America. Evoking the internal conflicts, unchecked egos, and power struggles within the White House, the State Department, and the military, Halberstam shows how the decisions of men who served in the Vietnam War, and those who did not, have shaped America's role in global events. He provides fascinating portraits of those in power—Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Kissinger, James Baker, Dick Cheney, Madeleine Albright, and others—to reveal a stunning view of modern political America.