“A world in which the leading liberal-democratic nation does not assume its role as world policeman will become a world in which dictatorships contend, or unite, to fill the breach. Americans seeking a return to an isolationist garden of Eden—alone and undisturbed in the world, knowing neither good nor evil—will soon find themselves living within shooting range of global pandemonium.”—From the Introduction In a brilliant book that will elevate foreign policy in the national conversation, Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist Bret Stephens makes a powerful case for American intervention abroad.
 In December 2011 the last American soldier left Iraq. “We’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq,” boasted President Obama. He was proved devastatingly wrong less than three years later as jihadists seized the Iraqi city of Mosul. The event cast another dark shadow over the future of global order—a shadow, which, Bret Stephens argues, we ignore at our peril.
 America in Retreat identifies a profound crisis on the global horizon. As Americans seek to withdraw from the world to tend to domestic problems, America’s adversaries spy opportunity. Vladimir Putin’s ambitions to restore the glory of the czarist empire go effectively unchecked, as do China’s attempts to expand its maritime claims in the South China Sea, as do Iran’s efforts to develop nuclear capabilities. Civil war in Syria displaces millions throughout the Middle East while turbocharging the forces of radical Islam. Long-time allies such as Japan, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, doubting the credibility of American security guarantees, are tempted to freelance their foreign policy, irrespective of U.S. interests. Deploying his characteristic stylistic flair and intellectual prowess, Stephens argues for American reengagement abroad. He explains how military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan was the right course of action, foolishly executed. He traces the intellectual continuity between anti-interventionist statesmen such as Henry Wallace and Robert Taft in the late 1940s and Barack Obama and Rand Paul today. And he makes an unapologetic case for Pax Americana, “a world in which English is the default language of business, diplomacy, tourism, and technology; in which markets are global, capital is mobile, and trade is increasingly free; in which values of openness and tolerance are, when not the norm, often the aspiration.”
 In a terrifying chapter imagining the world of 2019, Stephens shows what could lie in store if Americans continue on their current course. Yet we are not doomed to this future. Stephens makes a passionate rejoinder to those who argue that America is in decline, a process that is often beyond the reach of political cures. Instead, we are in retreat—the result of faulty, but reversible, policy choices. By embracing its historic responsibility as the world’s policeman, America can safeguard not only greater peace in the world but also greater prosperity at home.
 At once lively and sobering, America in Retreat offers trenchant analysis of the gravest threat to global order, from a rising star of political commentary.

America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder

Politics & Social Sciences

Stephens, Bret

Politics & Government

Sentinel

“Wise counsel for a constructive, tough-minded, and sensible foreign policy. Read and learn.” —GEORGE SHULTZ, U.S. Secretary of State, 1982–1989 The world is tipping into chaos. Why? In this acclaimed and influential book, Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist Bret Stephens shows how the retreat of American power, orchestrated by Barack Obama, has created the power vacuums now being filled by our enemies. From Vladimir Putin’s quest to restore the old czarist empire, to China’s efforts to dominate the South China Sea, to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, to ISIS’s dreams of an Islamic caliphate, we have entered an era in which our foes no longer fear us and our friends no longer trust us. With his stylistic flair and analytical brilliance, Stephens explains the ideological roots of Obama’s suspicions of American power. He demonstrates how a false belief in American decline has led to a disastrous prescription of retreat, as if the cure for domestic weakness is international weakness. In a prophetic chapter, he warns of what the world could look like in 2019 if we do not change course. And he lays out the right formula for U.S. foreign policy—the same formula that brought order to our once crime-ridden streets. America in Retreat is shaping the greatest foreign policy debate of our decade.

From Ukraine to the Middle East to China, the United States is redefining its role in international affairs. Alliance building, public diplomacy, and eschewing traditional warfare in favor of the focused use of hard power such as drones and special forces are all hallmarks of the so-called Obama Doctrine. Is this a farsighted foreign policy for the United States and the world in the twenty-first century — one that acknowledges and embraces the increasing diffusion of power among states and non-state actors? Or, is an America “leading from behind” a boon for the nations and blocs who want to roll back economic globalization, international law, and the spread of democracy and human rights? In this edition of the 14th semi-annual Munk Debates, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Bret Stephens and famed historian and foreign policy commentator Robert Kagan square off against CNN’s Fareed Zakaria and noted academic and political commentator Anne-Marie Slaughter. With ISIS looking to reshape the Middle East, Russia increasingly at odds with the rest of the West, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at a standstill, the Munk Debate on U.S. Foreign Policy asks: Has Obama’s foreign policy taken the U.S. in the right direction?

Has Obama Made the World a More Dangerous Place?: The Munk Debate on America Foreign Policy (Munk Debates)

KAGAN, ROBERT

ZAKARIA, FAREED

Slaughter, Anne-Marie

House of Anansi Press

The illuminated landscapes and still lives of the visionary painter Maxwell Gordon (1910-1983) were much celebrated in New York throughout the 1940s and 1950s (by Dore Ashton among others), exhibited at prestigious venues such as The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Then, in 1962, Gordon vanished from the art world map, and until now has remained largely invisible. More than a quarter-century after his death, Farewell the Tranquil Mind: The Art of Maxwell Gordon brings together the most extensive available record of his work, beginning with the whimsical expressionism of his early years, the social realism of his middle years and the hauntingly primitive dream-world of his final decades in Mexico and Israel. Gorgeously produced with over 100 full-color reproductions and a lengthy biographical essay by Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens, Farewell the Tranquil Mind is a landmark tribute to an unsung genius of twentieth-century American art.

Farewell the Tranquil Mind: The Art of Maxwell Gordon

Arts & Photography

Individual Artists

Birchwood Press

Jingle and Shake - A Festive Bus Adventure

Children's Books

Arts, Music & Photography

ABSCO Publishing

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