Over the past two decades, the most serious problems with U.S. foreign policy have revolved around the challenge of assessing uncertainty. Past experiences have shown that there is an urgent need to find ways of improving the ways in which foreign policy analysts assess uncertainty, and the ways in which foreign policy decision makers account for risk when evaluating high-stakes choices. This book shows shows how foreign policy analysts can assess uncertainty in amanner that is theoretically coherent, empirically meaningful, politically defensible, practically useful, and sometimes logically necessary for making sound choices.

The #1 New York Times bestseller from “one of America’s most hilarious and provocative writers . . . a volatile brew of one-liners and vitriol” (Time). Renowned for his cranky conservative humor, P. J. O’Rourke runs hilariously amok in this book, tackling the death of communism; his frustration with sanctimonious liberals; and Saddam Hussein in a series of classic dispatches from his coverage of the 1991 Gulf War. On Kuwait City after the war, he comments, “It looked like all the worst rock bands in the world had stayed there at the same time.” On Saddam Hussein, O’Rourke muses: “He’s got chemical weapons filled with . . . with . . . chemicals. Maybe he’s got The Bomb. And missiles that can reach Riyadh, Tel Aviv, Spokane. Stock up on nonperishable foodstuffs. Grab those Diet Coke cans you were supposed to take to the recycling center and fill them with home heating oil. Bury the Hummel figurines in the yard. We’re all going to die. Details at eleven.” And on the plague of celebrity culture, he notes: “You can’t shame or humiliate modern celebrities. What used to be called shame and humiliation is now called publicity.” Mordant and utterly irreverent, this is a modern classic from one of our great political satirists, described by Christopher Buckley as being “like S. J. Perelman on acid.” “Mocking on the surface but serious beneath . . . When it comes to scouting the world for world-class absurdities, O’Rourke is the right man for the job.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review “The funniest writer in America.” —The Wall Street Journal

“This lively appreciation of one of the most intimidating and massive novels ever written should persuade many hesitant readers to try scaling the heights of War and Peace sooner rather than later” (Publishers Weekly). Considered by many critics the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is also one of the most feared. And at 1,500 pages, it’s no wonder why. Still, in July 2009 Newsweek put War and Peace at the top of its list of 100 great novels and a 2007 edition of the AARP Bulletin included the novel in their list of the top four books everybody should read by the age of fifty. A New York Times survey from 2009 identified Warand Peace as the world classic you’re most likely to find people reading on their subway commute to work. What might all those Newsweek devotees, senior citizens, and harried commuters see in a book about the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s? War and Peace is many things. It is a love story, a family saga, a war novel. But at its core it’s a novel about human beings attempting to create a meaningful life for themselves in a country torn apart by war, social change, political intrigue, and spiritual confusion. It is a mirror of our times. Give War and Peace a Chance takes readers on a journey through War and Peace that reframes their very understanding of what it means to live through troubled times and survive them. Touching on a broad range of topics, from courage to romance, parenting to death, Kaufman demonstrates how Tolstoy’s wisdom can help us live fuller, more meaningful lives. The ideal companion to War and Peace, this book “makes Tolstoy’s characters lively and palpable…and may well persuade readers to finally dive into one of the world’s most acclaimed—and daunting—novels” (Kirkus Reviews).

In one of the most detailed and powerfully argued books published on American intervention in Vietnam, Fredrik Logevall examines the last great unanswered question on the war: Could the tragedy have been averted? His answer: a resounding yes. Challenging the prevailing myth that the outbreak of large-scale fighting in 1965 was essentially unavoidable, Choosing War argues that the Vietnam War was unnecessary, not merely in hindsight but in the context of its time. Why, then, did major war break out? Logevall shows it was partly because of the timidity of the key opponents of U.S. involvement, and partly because of the staunch opposition of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to early negotiations. His superlative account shows that U.S. officials chose war over disengagement despite deep doubts about the war's prospects and about Vietnam's importance to U.S. security and over the opposition of important voices in the Congress, in the press, and in the world community. They did so because of concerns about credibility—not so much America's or the Democratic party's credibility, but their own personal credibility. Based on six years of painstaking research, this book is the first to place American policymaking on Vietnam in 1963-65 in its wider international context using multiarchival sources, many of them recently declassified. Here we see for the first time how the war played in the key world capitals—not merely in Washington, Saigon, and Hanoi, but also in Paris and London, in Tokyo and Ottawa, in Moscow and Beijing. Choosing War is a powerful and devastating account of fear, favor, and hypocrisy at the highest echelons of American government, a book that will change forever our understanding of the tragedy that was the Vietnam War.

Uncertainty surrounds every major decision in international politics. Yet there is almost always room for reasonable people to disagree about what that uncertainty entails. No one can reliably predict the outbreak of armed conflict, forecast economic recessions, anticipate terrorist attacks, or estimate the countless other risks that shape foreign policy choices. Many scholars and practitioners therefore believe that it is better to keep foreign policy debates focused on the facts - that it is, at best, a waste of time to debate uncertain judgments that will often prove to be wrong. In War and Chance, Jeffrey A. Friedman shows how foreign policy officials often try to avoid the challenge of assessing uncertainty, and argues that this behavior undermines high-stakes decision making. Drawing on an innovative combination of historical and experimental evidence, he explains how foreign policy analysts can assess uncertainty in a manner that is theoretically coherent, empirically meaningful, politically defensible, practically useful, and sometimes logically necessary for making sound choices. Each of these claims contradicts widespread skepticism about the value of probabilistic reasoning in international politics, and shows how placing greater emphasis on assessing uncertainty can improve nearly any foreign policy debate. A clear-eyed examination of the logic, psychology, and politics of assessing uncertainty, War and Chance provides scholars and practitioners with new foundations for understanding one of the most controversial elements of foreign policy discourse.

Dramatic History