Books

If what is shaping up to be the worst foreign policy disaster in U.S. history has an upside, it is that the current war in Iraq should definitively, permanently settle a handful of critical questions about American conduct in the world. This book provides a list of those questions and even ventures some answers in the form of key lessons from Iraq.

The idea of assembling lessons as tools for avoiding the next war is less of a stretch than it… more

In the 20th century, a global network of colluding activists, institutions, and governments sought to engineer solutions to various real and perceived social problems by, as Matthew Connelly puts it in his new book, planning "other people's families." In its most egregious expression, this movement led to the forced sterilization of millions of people around the world, including many thousands in the U.S., on the grounds that they were -- genetically or otherwise -- unfit. California alone had sterilized 7,500… more

While one political party offers a bold, coherent, and failed vision for foreign policy, the other has proffered an inchoate and incoherent response that falls far short of a strategy. Matthew Yglesias -- a known "ringleader-of-sorts for the D.C. blogging community" -- suggests looking past both parties to offer a set of tried-and-true approaches for renewed internationalism and U.S. engagement with the world.

Copies of Heads in the Sand will be sold at the event.

Dude! What a rad plan! Kicking back over drinks at Bungalow 8, the hard-to-get-into Manhattan nightclub, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock hatched the idea of a humorous documentary and book about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Your average auteur would wake up the next morning back in his Brooklyn crib, reach for the Advil and realize that searching for the largest mass murderer in U.S. history is about as funny as a pounding hangover.

But Spurlock is not an auteur easily deterred.… more

On May 6th the American Strategy Program hosted an event with Philippe Sands, Professor of International Law at University College London and Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff for Colon Powell. Mr. Sands was in DC to testify to the House Judiciary Committee about the findings in his new book, Torture Team, which examines the legal implications of the Bush administration’s policy of torture. Col. Wilkerson was on hand for commentary on the subject. The event was moderated by… more

On May 2, The New America Foundation hosted a book event for President and CEO Steve Coll’s new book The Bin Ladens. An MP3 audio recording can be downloaded below, while video is available at right. Coll delivered a talk about the experience of Saudi Arabia, dealing with the pressures and prizes of modernity and globalization, through the prism of the Bin Laden family. He conveyed the diversity of experience that permeated the different members of the… more

The easy knock on Tarleton Gillespie's Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture is that it seems dated. In walking the reader through the many issues and arguments of digital copyright, Gillespie focuses on three seminal attempts at Digital Rights Management -- the Recording Industry Association of America's failed Secure Digital Music Initiative, moviemakers' somewhat more successful efforts to lock down DVDs, and the major television networks' push to require "broadcast flags" on digital television signals. All… more

CNN's Late Edition | Interview on Osama bin Laden

WOLF BLITZER (Host): Six-and-a-half years after 9/11, Osama bin Laden is still in hiding and a grave danger to the United States. What drives him? And what can we predict about what he might do next? For some answers we turn to two men for special insight. Steve Coll's new book is entitled, "The Bin Ladens." He's joining us from Berlin. And with her in Washington, our… more

Of all of Peter Drucker's achievements -- advising captains of industry and heads of state, coining the term "knowledge worker," winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom -- the most remarkable may be this: In 1974, his 800-plus-page tome, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, vaulted past The Joy of Sex on the national best seller list.

Last week, HarperCollins released a revised edition of Management. And regardless of whether it winds up eclipsing Bonk, the latest hot-selling volume on the physiology and psychology… more

Book TV | After Words Interview on "The bin Ladens"

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll is the author of "Ghost Wars" which looks at Osama bin Laden's time in Afghanistan since the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in the early 1980s. His latest book, "The Bin Ladens," is a history of the bin Laden family and its rise to prominence in Saudi Arabia. Mr. Coll discusses his new book with Michael Scheuer, former head of the bin Laden… more