The Global Cable 10 Holiday Gift Ideas from The Global Cable

Recommended by John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State (2013-2017)

Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe our democracy is in danger. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. 

Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die—and how ours can be saved.

Listen to the episode here. 

Recommended by Alexander Vershbow, PWH Distinguished Visiting Fellow and Deputy Secretary General of NATO (2012-2016)

Russia's stealth invasion of Ukraine and its assault on the US elections in 2016 forced a reluctant West to grapple with the effects of hybrid war. While most citizens in the West are new to the problems of election hacking, state-sponsored disinformation campaigns, influence operations by foreign security services, and frozen conflicts, citizens of the frontline states between Russia and the European Union have been dealing with these issues for years.

The Lands in Between: Russia vs. the West and the New Politics of Russia's Hybrid War contends that these "lands in between" hold powerful lessons for Western countries. Increasingly, the political pathologies of these small, vulnerable, and backwards states in Europe are our problems too. In this deepening conflict, we are all lands in between.

Listen to the episode here.

Recommended by Harold Hongju Koh, Sterling Professor of International Law at Yale University

In her memoir, Pulitzer Prize winner, human rights advocate, and former UN Ambassador Samantha Power offers an urgent response to the question "What can one person do?" and a call for a clearer eye, a kinder heart, and a more open and civil hand in our politics and daily lives. The Education of an Idealist traces Power’s distinctly American journey from immigrant to war correspondent to presidential Cabinet official. 

Power transports us from her childhood in Dublin to the streets of war-torn Bosnia to the White House Situation Room and the world of high-stakes diplomacy. Along the way, she illuminates the intricacies of politics and geopolitics, reminding us how the United States can lead in the world, and why we each have the opportunity to advance the cause of human dignity. Power’s memoir is an unforgettable account of the power of idealism and of one person’s fierce determination to make a difference.

Listen to the episode here.

Recommended by Zaina Erhaim, Kelly Writers House and Perry World House Writer at Risk and acclaimed Syrian journalist

Oscar nominee Feras Fayyad (“Last Men in Aleppo”) delivers an unflinching story of the Syrian war with his powerful new documentary, The Cave. For besieged civilians, hope and safety lie underground inside the subterranean hospital known as the Cave, where pediatrician and managing physician Dr. Amani Ballour and her colleagues Samaher and Dr. Alaa have claimed their right to work as equals alongside their male counterparts, doing their jobs in a way that would be unthinkable in the oppressively patriarchal culture that exists above. Following the women as they contend with daily bombardments, chronic supply shortages and the ever-present threat of chemical attacks, The Cave paints a stirring portrait of courage, resilience and female solidarity.

Listen to the episode here. 

Recommended by William Lacy Swing, PWH Distinguished Visiting Fellow and Director General, International Organization for Migration (2008-2018)

Drawing on a trove of newly declassified cables and memos, former diplomat William J. Burns gives readers a rare inside look at American diplomacy in action. Burns sketches the contours of effective American leadership in a world that resembles neither the zero-sum Cold War contest of his early years as a diplomat nor the “unipolar moment” of American primacy that followed.

Ultimately, The Back Channel is an eloquent, deeply informed, and timely story of a life spent in service of American interests abroad. It is also a powerful reminder, in a time of great turmoil, of the enduring importance of diplomacy.

Listen to the episode here. 

Recommended by John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State (2013-2017)

Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms reveal a new and compelling lens on the biggest stories of our age—from the out-of-nowhere victory of Donald Trump to the rise of mega-platforms like Facebook. They show the strength of new power—movements like #MeToo; platforms like Airbnb and Lyft; organizations like TED and Lego—as well as its dark side. They contrast it to “old power,” the foundations of which are coming under assault in an age of ubiquitous participation.
 
The battle between old and new power is determining who governs us, how we work, and even how we think and feel. This groundbreaking book provides a new way to understand the world—and the tools we all need to thrive in it.

Listen to the episode here. 

Recommended by Trudy Rubin, PWH Visiting Fellow and Foreign Affairs Columnist, The Philadelphia Inquirer

In AI Superpowers, Kai-Fu Lee urges the US and China to both accept and to embrace the great responsibilities that come with significant technological power. Most experts already say that AI will have a devastating impact on blue-collar jobs. But Lee predicts that Chinese and American AI will have a strong impact on white-collar jobs as well. Is universal basic income the solution? In Lee’s opinion, probably not.  But he provides  a clear description of which jobs will be affected and how soon, which jobs can be enhanced with AI, and most importantly, how we can provide solutions to some of the most profound changes in human history that are coming soon.

Listen to the episode here.

Recommended by Harold Hongju Koh, Sterling Professor of International Law at Yale University

Richard Holbrooke's power lay in an utter belief in himself and his idea of a muscular, generous foreign policy. From his days as a young adviser in Vietnam to his last efforts to end the war in Afghanistan, Holbrooke embodied the postwar American impulse to take the lead on the global stage. His story is the story of America during its era of supremacy: its strength, drive, and sense of possibility, as well as its penchant for overreach and heedless self-confidence. In Our Man, drawn from Holbrooke's diaries and papers, we are given a nonfiction narrative that is both intimate and epic in its revelatory portrait of this extraordinary and deeply flawed man and the elite spheres of society and government he inhabited.

Listen to the episode here.

Recommended by Alexander Vershbow, PWH Distinguished Visiting Fellow and Deputy Secretary General of NATO (2012-2016)

Chernobyl, a five-part miniseries co-production from HBO and Sky, dramatizes the story of the 1986 nuclear accident, one of the worst man-made catastrophes in history — and of the sacrifices made to save Europe from unimaginable disaster.

Listen to the episode here. 

Recommended by Sarah Bush, PWH Lightning Scholar and Associate Professor of Political Science, Yale University 

n December 1972, Jean McConville, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders, her children clinging to her legs. They never saw her again. Her abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. 

Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. From radical and impetuous I.R.A. terrorists such as Dolours Price, who, when she was barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and targeting informers for execution, to the ferocious I.R.A. mastermind known as The Dark, to the spy games and dirty schemes of the British Army, to Gerry Adams, who negotiated the peace but betrayed his hardcore comrades by denying his I.R.A. past--Say Nothing conjures a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish.

Listen to the episode here.