To mark the occasion of the 75th anniversary of NATO, we are sharing this extract from Sten Rynning’s new book, NATO: From Cold War to Ukraine, a History of the World’s Most Powerful Alliance. NATO’s vision of being free and allied contrasts with the Eurasian vision of President Vladimir Putin’s Russia or the Sinocentric vision of President Xi Jinping’s China. Essentially, NATO was and remains a testbed for the geopolitical relevance of Western values. What happens next to NATO is of concern to everyone.1 NATO lies at the heart of Europe’s security order. And that is no small matter. President ..read more

First published in 2014, Ben Judah’s book Fragile Empire is the result of his travels throughout Russia and the former Soviet republics where he conducted extensive interviews with President Vladimir Putin’s friends, foes, and colleagues, government officials, business tycoons, mobsters, and ordinary Russian citizens. The book is a probing assessment of Putin’s rise to power and what it has meant for Russia and her people. One of the interviews in the book was with Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny. Following the recent news of his death while serving a 19 year prison sentence in the ..read more

Published in 2021, Vladislav Zubok’s book Collapse is a major study of the collapse of the Soviet Union—showing how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms led to its demise. Thirty years on, Collapse offers a major reinterpretation of the final years of the USSR. In this blogpost, part of the 50 Years in 50 Books series for our 50th Anniversary, Vladislav Zubok reflects on how his book Collapse challenges the dominant narratives in Russian-Soviet history. Article by Vladislav Zubok It is a great honour for me to see my book, Collapse, featured in the Yale University Press 50th anniversary series.&nbs ..read more

November 1st 2023 marks the 30th anniversary since the entry into force of the Maastricht Treaty, which established the European Union. This extract from Dermot Hodson’s book, Circle of Stars: A History of the EU and the People Who Made It, describes the events occurring in the European Community in the lead up to the signing of the Treaty. Håkan Dahlström from Malmö, Sweden, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Maastricht wasn’t written on a blank page. As the historian Kiran Klaus Patel shows, the treaty’s three signature projects – the single currency ..read more

Why Marx was Right was first published in 2011. Terry Eagleton makes the argument against Marx’s irrelevancy; asking the question, “What if all the most familiar objections to Marx’s work are mistaken?”. In each case, Eagleton’s book demonstrates the gap between these assumptions and Marx’s own thought. In a world in which capitalism has been shaken to its roots by some major crises, Why Marx Was Right remains as urgent and timely as it is brave and candid. In this blogpost, part of our 50 Years in 50 Books series for our 50th Anniversary, Terry Eagleton recounts the unlikely reade ..read more

Access to water has played a pivotal role in the Israel-Palestine dispute. Israel has diverted the River Jordan via pipes and canals to build a successful modern state. But this has been at the expense of the region’s cohabitants. Gaza is now so water-stressed that the United Nations has warned it could soon become uninhabitable; its traditional water source has been ruined by years of over-extraction and mismanagement, the effects exacerbated by years of crippling blockade.   In In Search of the River Jordan, award-winning author and journalist James Fergusson travels to every corner of ..read more

The theme of Earth Day 2023 is: Invest In Our Planet. We’ve pulled together a reading list of blog posts and extracts engaging with this subject matter and wider conversations about our relationship to our planet. Read below. ‘Earth‘ by Kevin M. Gill, CC BY 2.0. The Rights of Marine Animals Chris Armstrong Chris Armstrong’s book, A Blue New Deal, now in paperback, is an urgent account of the state of our oceans today – and what we must do to protect them. The free chapter extracted on the blog concentrates on the rights of marine animals. Read below. The Rights of Marine Animals – C ..read more

Thomas Piketty argues that the time has come to support an inclusive and expansive conception of socialism as a counterweight against the hyper-capitalism that defines our current economic ideology in this first chapter from his new collection, Time For Socialism (out October 26th). Read the first chapter for free below. Time for Socialism: Dispatches from a World on Fire, 2016-2021 As a correspondent for the French newspaper Le Monde, world-renowned economist Thomas Piketty has documented the rise and fall of Trump, the drama of Brexit, Emmanuel Macron’s ascendance to the French presidency ..read more

To mark the occasion of World Whale Day we have made a chapter from Chris Armstrong’s new book, A Blue New Deal, available to read for free. The chapter concentrates on the rights of marine animals. The ocean is first and foremost a home to many other species, and their interests should be at the heart of the struggle for ocean justice. The chapter argues for the protection of an important set of rights for all cetaceans, that is, whales, dolphins and porpoises. This is just an opening salvo in the case for animal rights at sea, though, and the chapter shows how we could go about building a d ..read more

Joseph Stalin led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953 in a reign marked by ruthless tyranny and the deaths of millions of people. Sunday 5th March 2023 marks 70 years since his death. In this post, we are sharing a series of free extracts from Yale books to shed light on the dictator, his oppressive regime, his demise and the aftermath. Stalin New Biography of a Dictator Oleg Khlevniuk The most authoritative and engrossing biography of the notorious dictator ever written, winner of the 2016 PROSE Award for Biography & Autobiography. ‘Enthralling, brilliant, and groundb ..read more