MIDWAY: How America won the War in the Pacific
The Silver Waterfall has been written by Brendan Simms and Steven McGregor. McGregor, who gave a talk on the book in Austin (hosted by the Clements Center), is a US…
Reagan the Peacemaker: A Major New Book
When Ronald Reagan was running for the Presidency, many thought he was a warmonger. The fear that he would lead the United States into a bloody conflict was palpably real…
Montesquieu and the Founding of America
“War, peace and international affairs: Montesquieu’s writings are essential to our understanding of America for the past 250 years.” Dr. Paul Carrese (Arizona State University) is an authority on the…
Power Politics in China
Much of Chinese politics is opaque, even for the experts, but certain moments have entered the public consciousness in the West. One of these was the infamous Gang of Four,…
Cold War Radio
While radio often seems nostalgic now, it had great value during the Cold War, from the 1950s to the 1990s. Writing of Radio Liberty and Voice of America in his…
Naval Strategy
In physics, ‘exceptional points’ are specific system parameters leading to the commonality of two different solutions that can only exist in systems with losses. For those with a scientific, rather…
Getting China Wrong
Our engagement with China has been wrong for decades. Disastrously wring. This is the assessment of Aaron L. Friedberg, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. He outlined…
Doris Goodwin donates archives to Austin
The Briscoe Center for American History in Austin is about to become the home to collected archives of Doris Kearns Goodwin, and her late husband Richard Goodwin (1931-2018). Richard Goodwin’s…
Lady Bird Johnson
There is no place in the United States that is more closely associated with Lady Bird Johnson than Austin. After her death in 2007 the river running through the city…
Churchill Had Sense of Destiny
At latest count there are 1009 biographies of Winston Churchill. Why, asked Republican strategist Karl Rove, do we need another one? He asked this question of historian Andrew Roberts in…