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Disclaimer: Articles are chosen for relevance and circulated for information only. Views expressed are those of the respective journalists / authors. Republication does not infer endorsement. Book Review Editor: Ralph Mahar - Suggestions for Book Reviews will be gratefully received at thepillarsociety.bulletins@gmail.com Avertissement : Les articles sont choisis pour leur pertinence et sont diffusés à titre d'information seulement. Les opinions exprimées sont celles des journalistes/auteurs respectifs. La republication n'implique pas d'approbation. Rédacteur en chef des critiques de livres : Ralph Mahar - Les suggestions de critiques de livres sont les bienvenues à l'adresse suivante : thepillarsociety.bulletins@gmail.com
About the book: Tomorrow Is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley Farrar, Straus & Giroux - 272 pages 21.99 (Kindle) Publication Date: September 16, 2025
About the Author: Hussein Agha
Hussein Agha has been involved in Israeli-Palestinian affairs and negotiations for more than half a century. He was a senior associate fellow at Chatham House and, until 2023, had been a senior associate member of St. Antony’s College, Oxford for over 25 years. He has co-authored books on Syria, Iran, Palestinian national security, and Track-II diplomacy with A. S. Khalidi. He is the editor of Mideast Mirror. Biography Credit: MacMillan Publishers
About the Author: Robert Malley
Robert Malley is a lecturer and Senior Fellow at the Yale Jackson School and the author, with Hussein Agha, of Tomorrow is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine. He served as Special Envoy for Iran from January 2021 to April 2023. Prior to that, he was president and CEO of the International Crisis Group. Under President Barack Obama, he served as Special Assistant to the President, Senior Advisor to the President for the Counter-ISIL campaign, and White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and Gulf Region in 2015-2016 and, before that, as Senior Director for the Gulf Region and Syria. Before joining the National Security Council staff in February 2014, Malley founded and directed the International Crisis Group’s Middle East and North Africa Program from January 2002. Prior to that, he was a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Until January 2001, Malley was Special Assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli Affairs and Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council. Mr. Malley first joined the National Security Council staff in August 1994 as Director for Democracy. In July 1997, he became Executive Assistant to the National Security Advisor from July 1997 to September 1998, acting as an informal chief of staff for Samuel R. Berger. Malley served as a law clerk to Justice Byron R. White of the United States Supreme Court in 1991-1992. Malley is a graduate of Yale University, Harvard Law School and Oxford University, England, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He is the author of The Call from Algeria: Third Worldism, Revolution and the Turn to Islam, and of articles published in the New York Review of Books, Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Le Monde, and several other publications. Biography Credit: Yale University - Jackson School of Global Affairs
À propos du livre : Demain, c'est hier : la vie, la mort et la quête de la paix en Israël/Palestine par Hussein Agha et Robert Malley Farrar, Straus & Giroux - 272 pages 21,99 $ (Kindle) Date de publication : 16 septembre 2025
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About the book: Intent to Destroy: Russia's Two-Hundred-Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine by Eugene Finkel Basic Books - 382 pages 21.99 (Kindle) Publication Date: November 19, 2024
About the Author: Eugene Finkel
Eugene Finkel works at the intersection of political science and history. He was born in Ukraine and grew up in Israel. Finkel received a BA in Political Science and International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a PhD in Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focuses on how institutions and individuals respond to extreme situations: mass violence, state collapse, and rapid change. Finkel's most recent book is Intent to Destroy: Russia's Two-Hundred-Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine (Basic Books, 2024). He is also the author of Ordinary Jews: Choice and Survival during the Holocaust (Princeton University Press, 2017), Reform and Rebellion in Weak States (Cambridge University Press, 2020, co-authored with Scott Gehlbach) and Bread and Autocracy: Food, Politics and Security in Putin’s Russia (Oxford University Press, 2023, co-authored with Janetta Azarieva and Yitzhak M. Brudny). His articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, East European Politics and Societies, Slavic Review, and several other journals and edited volumes. Finkel also published articles and op-eds in The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Foreign Affairs, The Spectator and other outlets. Biography Credit: JohnHopkins
About the book: The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong's Greatest Dissident, and China's Most Feared Critic by Mark L. Clifford Free Press - 281 pages 20.99 (Kindle) Publication Date: December 3, 2024
About the Author: Mark L. Clifford
Mark L. Clifford is the president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Hong Kong. A Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, he lived in Asia from 1987 until 2021. Previously, Clifford was the editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), and publisher and editor-in-chief of The Standard (Hong Kong). He held senior editorial positions at BusinessWeek and the Far Eastern Economic Review in Hong Kong and Seoul. He was a director of Next Digital, publisher of Jimmy Lai’s pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, when the government shut it in 2021. Biography Credit: Mark L. Gifford
About the book: The Man Who Would Be King: Mohammed bin Salman and the Transformation of Saudi Arabia by Karen Elliott House Harper - 304 pages 14.99 (Kindle) Publication Date: July 8, 2025
About the Author: Karen Elliott House
Karen Elliott House served as the publisher of The Wall Street Journal from 2002 until her retirement in 2006. She also held various roles throughout a 32-year career at Dow Jones & Company, most recently as senior vice president and a member of the company's executive committee. She is a broadly experienced business executive with particular knowledge and expertise in international affairs. Currently, House is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, as well as the author of On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines, and Future (Knopf, 2012). As part of her career with Dow Jones, House served as foreign editor, diplomatic correspondent, and energy correspondent. Her journalism awards include a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for coverage of the Middle East (1984), two Overseas Press Club awards for coverage of the Middle East and of Islam, and the Edwin M. Hood Award for Excellence in Diplomatic Reporting for a series on Saudi Arabia (1982). In both her news and business roles, House interviewed world leaders including, Saddam Hussein, Lee Kwan Yew, Vladimir Putin, Margaret Thatcher, Richard Nixon, George H. W. Bush, and Yasser Arafat, among many others. House has appeared frequently on television over the past three decades including on Washington Week in Review, Meet the Press, and Face the Nation, and more recently has been featured on PBS, Fox, CNN, and CNBC as an expert on international relations. House serves multiple nonprofit boards including the Rand Corporation, the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Asia Society, the German-American Council, and Boston University, and is also a member of the advisory board of the College of Communication at the University of Texas. House is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and has studied and taught at Harvard University's Institute of Politics. House holds honorary degrees from Boston University and Lafayette College and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. House also received the honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy in 2013. Biography Credit: Pepperdine
About the book: Swap: A Secret History of the New Cold War by Drew Hinshaw & Joe Parkinson Harper - 303 pages 14.99 (Kindle) Publication Date: August 19, 2025
About the Author: Drew Hinshaw
Drew Hinshaw is a senior reporter with The Wall Street Journal who has reported from more than fifty countries for the paper since 2010. He travels widely, covering breaking news and reporting longer-form investigations. He was a part of a team of reporters whose coverage of China's rising nationalism was a 2021 Pulitzer international reporting finalist. His investigation into cargo ship crews abandoned at sea was a finalist for the Overseas Press Club's top prize for human interest journalism, as well as a Gerald Loeb Award feature finalist. The Society of Publishers in Asia gave Drew and his colleagues its public service journalism award for their reporting on the origins of Covid-19. His coverage of Liberia during its Ebola epidemic won the 2015 Deadline Club's Enterprise Reporting award. He is the co-author of "Bring Back Our Girls," an account of the rescue effort to free 276 teenage schoolgirls who had been kidnapped by Boko Haram, which was named the Overseas Press Club’s best nonfiction book on international affairs of 2021. Biography Credit: Wall Street Journal
About the Author: Joe Parkinson
Joe Parkinson leads The Wall Street Journal's world enterprise team, deploying to the world's biggest breaking stories and piloting deeply reported investigations. His stories often follow financial flows into some of the most opaque corners of the global economy. He is based in Europe but roving widely, working with bureau chiefs and reporters to catalyze our best reporting from the field. Joe was previously the Journal's Africa bureau chief in Johannesburg and Turkey bureau chief in Istanbul. A Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2016 for reporting on the abortive Turkish coup, his work has won a string of international awards. His first book, “Bring Back Our Girls,” co-written with Drew Hinshaw, won the Overseas Press Club's Cornelius Ryan Award for best book of 2021. Biography Credit: Wall Street Journal
About the book: Presidents at War: How World War II Shaped a Generation of Presidents, from Eisenhower and JFK through Reagan and Bush by Steven M Gillon Dutton - 525 pages 18.99 (Kindle) Publication Date: February 18, 2025
About the Author: Steven M. Gillon
Steven Gillon is the former Scholar-in-Residence at The History Channel and emeritus professor of history at the University of Oklahoma. Gillon received his BA in history from Widener University, where he graduated summa cum laude with honors in history. He was named the recipient of the faculty prize for maintaining the highest undergraduate GPA. He went on to earn his MA and PhD in American civilization from Brown University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. After receiving his PhD, Gillon spent nine years teaching history at Yale University, where he won the prestigious DeVane Medal for outstanding undergraduate teaching. In 1994, he accepted a position as University Lecturer in modern history at Oxford University. Three years later, he returned to the United States at the invitation of the president of the University of Oklahoma to become the founding dean of a new Honors College. Gillon is one of the nation's leading experts on modern American history and politics. He has written or edited nearly a dozen books including the New York Times e-book bestseller, The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry that Defined a Generation (Oxford 2008). Among his many other books are: Boomer Nation: The Largest and Richest Generation and How it Changed America (Free Press 2004); 10 Days that Unexpectedly Changed America (Three Rivers 2006); Pearl Harbor: FDR Leads the Nation into War (Basic 2011); That’s Not What We Meant to Do: Reform and Its Unintended Consequences in Twentieth-Century America (W.W. Norton, 2000); The Democrats' Dilemma: Walter F. Mondale and the Liberal Legacy (Columbia University, 1992); and Politics and Vision: The ADA and American Liberalism, 1947-1985 (Oxford 1987). Gillon's next book, Presidents at War, will be released in early 2025. Gillon's articles have appeared in both academic journals and popular newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Boston Globe. He is a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post. He has made appearances on NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News as a commentator and expert on issues related to modern American history. Over the past decade, Gillon has hosted a number of shows on The History Channel, including the network's flagship public affairs program, HistoryCenter. He has also hosted Our Generation, History vs. Hollywood, and Movies in Time. His last three books have been turned into prime time documentaries on the network: The Kennedy Assassination 24 Hours After, Pearl Harbor: 24 Hours After, and Lee Harvey Oswald: 48 Hours to Live. In addition to his scholarly and television work, Gillon has served as a historical consultant for a number of prominent organizations. He was the chief historian for the Woodstock Museum in Bethel, New York. He spent two years as a consultant to News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch. In 2013, AARP chose him as one of ten “Thought Leaders” in the United States on issues related to the aging of the Baby Boom generation. Biography Credit: Miller Center - University of Virginia
About the book: Why Empires Fall: Rome, America, and the Future of the West by Peter Heather and John Rapley Yale University Press - 200 pages 36.74 (Kindle) Publication Date: September 5, 2023
About the Author: Peter Heather
Peter Heather was born in Northern Ireland in 1960 and educated at Maidstone Grammar School and New College, Oxford. He has taught at University College, London, and Yale University, and is currently a Fellow of Medieval History at Worcester College Oxford. He is the author of a number of acclaimed works of history, including The Fall of the Roman Empire, published by Pan Macmillan in 2005. Biography Credit: Pan MacMillan
About the Author: John Rapley
John Rapley is a political economist specialized in global development, the world economy and economic history. Born, raised and educated in Canada, he returned to his parents’ old meeting-ground, Oxford, on a post-doctoral fellowship. After launching his academic career there in the Department of International Development, Rapley decided to immerse himself in his subject by moving to the developing world. There, he spent the next two decades working as an academic, journalist and ultimately the creator of a think tank (the Caribbean Policy Research Institute). After helping governments navigate the 2008 financial crisis, he returned to Britain, making his home at the University of Cambridge. Teaching in the University’s Centre of Development Studies, Rapley resumed the writing life, and now divides his time among Europe, Canada, and South Africa, where he is a senior fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study, along with South Korea, where he is a visiting professor at Yonsei University’s Institute for Poverty Alleviation and International Development. Rapley still keeps his hand in journalism and, following a long and varied career during which he interviewed everything from prime ministers and billionaires on their private islands to drug-lords and victims of sex-slavery, he contributes frequently to the Globe and Mail. Biography Credit: GlobeandMail
About the book: The Spy in the Archive; How One Man Tried to Kill the KGB by Gordon Corera William Collins - 298 pages 24.99 (Kindle) Publication Date: June 5, 2025
About the Author: Gordon Corera
Gordon Corera is a journalist and author specializing in security and intelligence issues. He is the co-host with David McCloskey of the new Goalhanger Podcast 'The Rest is Classified'. He was educated at Oxford and Harvard University and joined the BBC in 1997. In 2004, he was appointed a Security Correspondent for BBC News covering terrorism, cyber security, the work of intelligence agencies and other national security issues for BBC TV, Radio and Online. He has reported from across the United States, Asia, Africa and the Middle East and presented programmes focusing on intelligence agencies including MI6, MI5, GCHQ, the CIA, NSA and Mossad as well as issues relating to technology and security and the 2003 Iraq war. He is the author of a number of books including Shopping for Bombs: Nuclear Proliferation; Global Insecurity and the Rise and Fall of the AQ Khan Network; Intercept - The Secret History of Computers and Spies; MI6 – Life and Death in the British Secret Service; Operation Columba - The Secret Pigeon Service; Russians Among Us and The Spy in the Archive. Biography Credit: Georgina Capel Associates
About the book: Propaganda Girls: The Secret War of the Women in the OSS by Lisa Rogak Mariner Books - 225 pages 21.99 (Kindle) Publication Date: March 4, 2025
About the Author: Lisa Rogak
Lisa Rogak, the New York Times bestselling author of more than 40 books, which have been published in more than two dozen languages. Her books Barack Obama: In His Own Words, and Angry Optimist: The Life & Times of Jon Stewart, hit the New York Times bestseller lists. Haunted Heart: The Life & Times of Stephen King was nominated for both the Edgar and Anthony Awards. Her books have been reviewed and otherwise mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, and hundreds of other publications. She appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show as the featured guest in a show about small towns to promote her book, Moving to the Country Once and For All. She served as co-author with famed YouTube star Rich Benoit on his memoir Going Fast and Fixing Things: True Stories from the World’s Most Popular DIY Repair Expert and Car Aficionado, and helped the late librarian Jan Louch tell the story of the world’s most famous library cats in The True Tails of Baker and Taylor: The Library Cats Who Left Their Pawprints on a Small Town . . . and the World The Man Behind the DaVinci Code, her biography of famed author Dan Brown, was published in two dozen languages. In 2020, she published Rachel Maddow, the first biography of the acclaimed MSNBC anchor followed by Alex Trebek: A Biography. Her biography of famed cartoonist, A Boy Named Shel: The Life and Times of Shel Silverstein, is currently in development for release as a major motion picture. She lives in New Hampshire and is currently at work on a memoir. Biography Credit: lisarogak.com
About the book: The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century by Tim Weiner Mariner Books - 461 pages 21.99 (Kindle) Publication Date: July 15, 2025
About the Author: Tim Weiner
Tim Weiner graduated from Columbia University with a Bachelor of Arts in history and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He was a Washington correspondent for The Philadelphia Inquirer from 1982 to 1992, for The New York Times from 1993 to 2009 as a foreign correspondent in Mexico, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan and as a national security correspondent in Washington, DC. Weiner won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting as an investigative reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer, for his articles on the black budget spending at the Pentagon and the CIA. His book Blank Check: The Pentagon's Black Budget is based on that newspaper series. He won the National Book Award in Nonfiction for his 2007 book Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. In 2012, Weiner published Enemies: A History of the FBI, which traces the history of the FBI's secret intelligence operations from the bureau's creation in the early 20th century through its ongoing role in the war on terrorism. His latest book, The Folly and the Glory: America, Russia, and Political Warfare, 1945–2020, was published in 2020. Among other things it describes how the CIA helped Joseph Mobutu as a reliable anti-communist in Congo, or how Ronald Reagan's encounter with Pope John Paul II led to a covert program to support the Polish Solidarity movement. Timothy Naftali cautions that Weiner may be overstating Putin's influence on the 2016 Presidential elections: "The Trump phenomenon, which the Russians abetted but did not create, emerged from a broken nation." This is also the assessment of Rajan Menon who, in his review for The New York Times, furthermore contends that he found no evidence supporting Weiner's suggestion that NATO expansion toward the Russian border in the 1990s sprang from the mind of Anthony Lake. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Kate Doyle, an expert in human rights and freedom of information. Biography Credit: Wikipedia
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