Selected by the Globalist as one of the top ten books of 2004, The River Runs Black is the most comprehensive and balanced volume to date on China's growing environmental crisis and its implications for the country's development.

Edward J. Lincoln takes up critical questions concerning the East Asian economy in this timely and important book and explores what is happening to regional trade and investment flows and explains what sort of regional arrangements would be the most attractive for the United States, and for the world economy.

An internationally renowned economist, Jagdish Bhagwati takes conventional wisdom—that globalization is the cause of several social ills—and turns it on its head. Properly regulated, globalization, he says, is the most powerful force for social good in the world.

In Free Trade Today, Dr. Bhagwati applies critical insights from revolutionary developments in commercial policy theory to show how the pursuit of social and environmental agendas can be creatively reconciled with the pursuit of free trade.

The evolution of American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union, and later Russia, is traced through the tumultuous and uncertain period following the end of the cold war. It examines how American policymakers—particularly in the executive branch—coped with the opportunities and challenges presented by the new Russia.

Distinguished historian Kenneth Maxwell, Nelson and David Rockefeller senior fellow for inter-American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, collects some of his most significant writings, concerning a variety of fields.

Senior Fellow Warren Bass offers striking new insights into the origins of today's Middle East and illuminates three of the most memorable figures of the twentieth century and their diplomatic struggles at the height of the Cold War: David Ben-Gurion; Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser; and the young and dynamic John F. Kennedy.

A thought-provoking retrospective that culls the views of economists, international financial institutions, Wall Street, organized labor, and various public-interest organizations on how to fortify the U.S. global financial infrastructure. The effort is the culmination of an eighteen-month study that sought to encourage the evolution of middle-class-oriented economic development in emerging-market countries.

CFR Fellow Ronald Asmus, who as a former adviser to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was one of the architects of NATO enlargement, draws on State Department classified archives to answer questions concerning the history and development of NATO.

Barnett R. Rubin concludes that preventive action should be a much higher priority for the United States, other governments, international organizations, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) than it currently is.

At a time when American primacy appears to be stronger than ever, Council Fellow and Georgetown Professor Charles Kupchan argues that the end of Pax Americana is near. What will replace American supremacy, and how American leaders should prepare for this new era, are the central questions of this provocative new book.

Can China become a true global economic power? That depends on the evolution of the Chinese high-technology sector. The industry's success or failure will determine whether China becomes a modern economy or simply a large one, argues CFR Senior Fellow Adam Segal in the first detailed look at a major institutional experiment with high-tech endeavors in China.

What exactly is globalization, and should its effects be cheered or jeered? How have developing countries fared under globalization's new dispensation, and what if anything can be done to help them prosper? How are states and firms reacting to the new pressures placed on them? Should the international economic architecture be reformed in response?

With the Cold War won and the economy booming, the United States relaxed during the 1990s, letting go of the tension it had sustained for decades. All that changed on September 11, 2001. The nation awoke to find itself at war. But it was a strange kind of war, one without front lines, fought in the shadows against an elusive enemy, by a country lacking a clear sense of where it would lead or how it would end.

An insightful overview of the modern Arab approach to warfare, providing a comprehensive understanding of the military capabilities and limitations of the Arab states, some of which are the United States' most important allies, while others may likely be future adversaries.

A record of the best attempts to understand international politics over the last dozen years, bringing together many powerful thinkers, including Samuel P. Huntington, Francis Fukuyama, and Fareed Zakaria, trying to figure out the forces that are driving world events and how Americans should respond.

Written as the Bush administration turned its sights on Saddam Hussein's regime, The Threatening Storm takes the reader back to the pre-war days of uncertainty about Saddam's weapons and his ties to major terrorist organizations, outlining a powerful case for a U.S. invasion of Iraq.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, three ideas dominate the world: peace as the preferred basis for relations between countries, democracy as the optimal way to organize political life, and free markets as the indispensable vehicle for the creation of wealth. While not practiced everywhere, these ideas have—for the first time in history—no serious rivals as methods for organizing the world's politics, economics, and international relations.

Council Senior Fellow Julia Sweig shatters the mythology surrounding the Cuban Revolution in a compelling revisionist history that reconsiders the roles of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara and restores, to a central position, the leadership of the Cuban urban underground, the Llano.