Foreign Policy’s Summer Reading List

It’s always a funny exercise to ask Foreign Policy contributors for their summer book recommendations. For some, a beach read is a novel about nuclear Armageddon. For others, it’s a hefty three-part history of World War II in the Pacific. What’s certain is if you’re an international relations buff, there’s sure to be a page-turner for you in these recommendations.

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
David Epstein (Riverhead Books, 352 pp., $28, May 2019)

In Range, journalist David Epstein describes the career of a seemingly pathetic individual who couldn’t find himself even as he entered his 30s. “He had been a student, an art dealer, a teacher, a bookseller, a prospective pastor, and an itinerant catechist. After promising starts, he had failed spectacularly in every path he tried,” Epstein writes. In a letter to his brother, the man eventually complained: “There’s something within me, so what is it!”

The man was Vincent van Gogh.

In his 2019 book, Epstein explains that highly accomplished—and original—people tend to be individuals who increased their creativity by accumulating experience across many different fields. His ideas have a special bearing on the current debate over whether large language models such as GPT-4 and artificial general intelligence (AGI), remarkable as they are, can truly replicate human creativity, given its complex origins based on human experience. Rather than facing the inevitable dominance of AGI, Epstein suggests, we will see a rise in what is known as the “centaur” model, where humans and AI join forces.

—Michael Hirsh, FP columnist

Good Omens
Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (William Morrow, 400 pp., $29.99, February 2006, reprint)

Nowadays, it has become increasingly easy to imagine nuclear Armageddon. Not that I’m saying doomsday is just around the corner. But when the Kremlin is routinely threatening to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Dr. Strangelove’s big red button may not be so unrealistic after all.

The next time you feel pessimistic about great-power competition, try turning to Good Omens by novelists Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. In this modern classic, first published in 1990, a demon and an angel with a penchant for mischief team up to stop a nuclear end of days—all while facing a hellhound named Dog, an Antichrist with a love for lemon drop candies, and the Four Horsemen in all their motorcycling glory. If the very definition of good vs. evil can come together to stop nuclear war, then maybe, just maybe, we can, too.

—Alexandra Sharp, FP’s World Brief writer

The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War
Louis Menand (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 880 pp., $35, April 2021)

I’m always on the lookout for books that explain the influence of art on politics. So when I found critic and historian Louis Menand’s The Free World in my late grandfather’s library last year, I knew I had to have it. At 880 pages, this is a veritable tome, as one FP colleague put it. Menand provides a Marauder’s Map for the intellectual movements of the 20th century, from the Beat poets to North Carolina’s Black Mountain College, one of the birthplaces of the American avant-garde. For anyone looking for the intersection of where American culture meets U.S. politics, this is not one to be missed.

—Jack Detsch, FP’s Pentagon and national security reporter

A Burning
Megha Majumdar (Vintage, 304 pp., $16, June 2021, paperback)

The “burning” that gives this 2020 novel its title is a terrorist attack where a train is set on fire in the Indian city of Kolkata, but the act itself serves as little more than a scene-setter. Indian novelist Megha Majumdar’s A Burning instead centers on Jivan, a young Muslim woman whose Facebook post questioning police and government inaction during the attack leads to her being labeled as a prime suspect and arrested.

As Jivan’s case makes its way through both India’s legal system and the court of public opinion, her fate becomes dependent on the book’s two other main characters: Lovely, a transgender woman and aspiring actress whom Jivan tutored, and PT Sir, Jivan’s former physical education teacher with right-wing political aspirations. Through their three parallel storylines, Majumdar paints a picture of the interplay between opportunity, identity, social media, and government power that will feel bleakly familiar to many residents and observers of today’s India. 

—Rishi Iyengar, FP’s reporter covering the intersection of geopolitics and technology

Why Beethoven: A Phenomenon in One Hundred Pieces
Norman Lebrecht (Pegasus Books, 352 pp., $29.95, May 2023)

Even if you’re not a classical music aficionado, you will have heard a piece by Ludwig van Beethoven. That means Norman Lebrecht’s Why Beethoven is for you. Lebrecht, one of the world’s most prominent classical music critics, possesses the all-too-rare skill of being able to make seemingly dry musical topics compelling reading for the general public. In Why Beethoven, Lebrecht assesses the life of the great composer through generations of performers’ interpretations of his music. Those performers come from all over the world; one current superstar interpreter is Chinese pianist Yuja Wang. Why Beethoven isn’t just enjoyable reading: It’s a tour d’horizon of one of the world’s few remaining international pursuits. Even as globalization is crumbling, classical music remains fundamentally borderless.

—Elisabeth Braw, FP columnist and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute

Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942
Ian W. Toll (W.W. Norton & Company, 640 pp., $35, November 2011)

OK, I’m cheating—this isn’t one book but three. Military historian Ian W. Toll’s trilogy on World War II in the Pacific is a stunning feat of historical nonfiction. Beginning with the first book, Pacific Crucible, Toll takes readers through the ins and outs of how the United States and its allies triumphed against the Japanese Empire, from the front lines of grueling battles in the Pacific islands to the flight decks of sinking aircraft carriers to the debates among top military brass and politicians in Washington and Tokyo.

Sure, three massive books on World War II may not seem like a light beach read, but Toll has crafted an incredibly well-paced, engaging, and readable narrative, even for the casual reader. He also offers new insights and fresh analysis for World War II buffs, particularly on submarine warfare, political upheaval in the United States (such as the riots in manufacturing cities fueled by racism and economic divisions), and the Japanese high command’s decision to sacrifice the bulk of its naval forces at Leyte Gulf.

The Pacific War—from Japan’s brutal occupation of foreign countries, arguably culminating in its reprehensible sacking of Manila, to the firebombing of Tokyo and Washington’s decision to drop atomic bombs—stands out as one of the greatest tragedies in human history. Toll does an admirable job of condensing that saga into just three books.

—Robbie Gramer, FP’s diplomacy and national security reporter

Art of War
Niccolò Machiavelli, trans. Christopher Lynch (University of Chicago Press, 312 pp., $16, May 2005, paperback)

Many experts believe that the 21st century’s emerging technologies with military applications—such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and hypersonic missiles—will fundamentally transform the military balance of power and international warfare. But is the world on the verge of a new military revolution, or is this just hype?

To answer this question, we could look to how one of history’s greatest political thinkers grappled with the foremost military revolution of his time: the gunpowder revolution. Niccolò Machiavelli is best known for his handbook for dictators, The Prince. But his most widely read book in his lifetime was Art of War, published in 1521. As the French philosopher Voltaire wrote two centuries later, “Machiavelli taught Europe the art of war.” Machiavelli believed that the new tech of his time—firearms and artillery—could play a useful, niche role on the battlefield but that ultimately wars would still be decided in hand-to-hand combat by men equipped with armor, swords, and shields.

If one of the world’s greatest minds could not fully appreciate the transformative effects of gunpowder on the battlefield, then it is likely that we, too, lack sufficient imagination to fully conceptualize the disruptive wars to which we will bear witness in our futures.

—Matthew Kroenig, FP columnist and vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

The Loop: How Technology Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back
Jacob Ward (Hachette Books, 320 pp., $29, January 2022)

I recently watched a panel discussion on the rise of artificial intelligence. I came away disturbed not because the panelists believed that AI posed an extinction-level threat but because they were mostly engaged in happy talk about AI’s potential to help resolve or mitigate some of humanity’s most vexing problems, including disease and climate change. Sorely missing from the discussion were the threats AI poses on a whole host of issues, from democratic politics to privacy to human rights. The panel reminded me of breathless commentary in the early days of the internet about how the new technology was going to save us all.

I like tech stuff—there is a long-dormant first-generation iPad lying in the back of a closet in my home office—but I am not a techie in the sense that I understand much about this stuff. So, after the panel, I went looking for a book that would 1) introduce me to AI in a readable way and 2) not push my basic math and statistics skills to their limits. I landed on technology journalist Jacob Ward’s The Loop. I am still in the middle of it, but I am happy to report that it is great. Ward does not just dive into AI but also provides much-needed backstory and context for the present moment. Importantly, Ward demonstrates how humans often develop technology without actually understanding how it may affect our ability to navigate our complex world.

—Steven A. Cook, FP columnist and Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations

My Father’s House
Joseph O’Connor (Europa Editions, 440 pp., $27, January 2023) 

My Father’s House by Irish novelist Joseph O’Connor is based on the true story of an Irish Monsignor in the Vatican, Hugh O’Flaherty. Under the noses of the Nazis occupying Rome in 1943, O’Flaherty ran a clandestine program hiding members of the anti-fascist resistance, moving them from one safe house to another, and trying to smuggle them out of the country. It was a formidable, dangerous operation. The Gestapo knew what he was doing and were closing in. It’s no wonder O’Connor’s fictionalized account reads like a thriller.

The novel is told in many voices, namely those of O’Flaherty’s unusual aides: a British ambassador, a Dutch journalist, an Italian aristocrat mourning her husband, and an escaped British prisoner of war, among others. They set up a choir and hold meetings, passing written messages and plans to one another—snippets that O’Flaherty later burns or eats—while loudly singing arias a cappella in an abandoned refectory in the Vatican that they suspect is riddled with German listening devices. This is a book about the importance of principles and values in times of evil. How timely—and very gripping, too.

—Caroline de Gruyter, FP columnist and Europe correspondent for the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad

Revolution in Development: Mexico and the Governance of the Global Economy
Christy Thornton (University of California Press, 310 pp., $29.95, January 2021, paperback)

At a time when climate shocks have spurred new calls to reform global financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), histories of how those bodies were created offer plenty of insights. In Revolution in Development, Christy Thornton, a sociologist and Latin America expert at Johns Hopkins University, traces why and how Mexican policymakers shifted from obstinate leadership in the push for developing countries to have more voice and resources at such institutions around the time of the IMF’s founding to, in later decades, encouraging compromise between the United States and more radical countries elsewhere in Latin America.

Thornton’s account also reveals how U.S. diplomats and business elites clashed over Mexico’s position regarding global economic governance in the 1970s, lifting the curtain on a lengthy showdown over a Mexico-led U.N. resolution on the topic in 1974. In that episode, big business—which called for watering down Mexico’s initiative and then rejecting it—prevailed over political advisors who wanted to give Mexico a symbolic victory for its friendliness to Washington behind the scenes.

Readers may see parallels with both the bumpy path of current efforts to change global financial governance and today’s U.S.-Mexico relationship, which is as complex as ever.

—Catherine Osborn, FP’s Latin America Brief writer

Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening
Douglas Brinkley (Harper, 896 pp., $40, November 2022)

Silent Spring Revolution by historian Douglas Brinkley recounts how growing alarm over environmental degradation in the 1960s and ’70s transformed from a social movement into the laws that define the United States’ environmental policy today. Brinkley’s wide-ranging account shows how rapidly public policy can evolve when social mobilization reaches a tipping point. In an age of escalating urgency about climate change—and when the politics of the energy transition seem ever more intractable—the history this book relates is of the utmost relevance.

—Jason Bordoff, FP columnist and co-founding dean at the Columbia Climate School

The Great Believers: A Novel
Rebecca Makkai (Penguin Books, 448 pp., $19, June 2019, paperback)

For those of us who did not live through the early years of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, it can be hard to fully understand the extent to which the world was consumed by fear of the disease. But writer Rebecca Makkai’s poignant 2018 novel, The Great Believers, centered on a group of friends grappling with the crisis in Chicago in the 1980s, effectively captures the terror and anxiety that defined the era. Her storytelling spans decades, alternating between the 1980s and the present day, and offers a heartbreaking portrait of the lives that were both directly and indirectly upended by a disease that has killed more than 40 million people worldwide.

I wouldn’t call The Great Believers a breezy summer read, per se; I ugly-cried while reading it on the train, prompting some alarmed looks from my seat neighbor. But it is a thoughtful and compassionate story of friendship and loss, and Makkai’s writing stuck with me long after I had finished the book.

—Christina Lu, FP reporter

The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal
David E. Hoffman (Anchor, 432 pp., $18, May 2016, paperback)

As many of us think through what a new cold war might look like, it’s well worth reading up on the original—and there are few more compelling accounts than journalist David E. Hoffman’s 2015 book, The Billion Dollar Spy, detailing the inner workings of the CIA’s Moscow station and in particular its most valuable agent, Adolf Tolkachev. Hoffman’s writing is fast-paced and well sourced, but it stands out for its descriptions of tradecraft under extreme surveillance, which are among the most detailed and compelling that I’ve read.

—James Crabtree, FP columnist and executive director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies-Asia

The Return of Faraz Ali: A Novel
Aamina Ahmad (Riverhead Books, 352 pp., $27, April 2022)

The Return of Faraz Ali, British writer Aamina Ahmad’s debut novel, is set in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1968, shortly before the major political upheaval that led to the ouster of the country’s first military dictator, Mohammed Ayub Khan. Ahmad’s novel is woven around a police officer who is asked to cover up the murder of a child forced into sex work. Neither intent on catching the killer nor inclined to overlook the crime, the officer struggles with the case as well as his own demons. His travails take place against some of the most momentous events in Pakistan’s history, including its breakup in 1971. This painfully honest novel tackles issues of class and ethnic privilege, political chicanery, and personal tragedy with skill, nuance, and candor.

—Sumit Ganguly, FP columnist and distinguished professor of political science at Indiana University Bloomington