Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead

by Jim Mattis and Bing West

In this #1 New York Times Best Seller, General Jim Mattis—the former Secretary of Defense and one of the most formidable strategic thinkers of our time—and Bing West, a former assistant secretary of defense and combat Marine, offer a clear-eyed account of learning how to lead in a chaotic world.

Call Sign Chaos is the account of Jim Mattis’s storied career, from wide-ranging leadership roles in three wars to ultimately commanding a quarter of a million troops across the Middle East. Along the way, Mattis recounts his foundational experiences as a leader, extracting the lessons he has learned about the nature of warfighting and peacemaking, the importance of allies, and the strategic dilemmas—and short-sighted thinking—now facing our nation. He makes it clear why America must return to a strategic footing so as not to continue winning battles but fighting inconclusive wars.

Mattis divides his book into three parts: Direct Leadership, Executive Leadership, and Strategic Leadership. In the first part, Mattis recalls his early experiences leading Marines into battle, when he knew his troops as well as his own brothers. In the second part, he explores what it means to command thousands of troops and how to adapt your leadership style to ensure your intent is understood by your most junior troops so that they can own their mission. In the third part, Mattis describes the challenges and techniques of leadership at the strategic level, where military leaders reconcile war’s grim realities with political leaders’ human aspirations, where complexity reigns and the consequences of imprudence are severe, even catastrophic.

Call Sign Chaos is a memoir of a life of warfighting and lifelong learning, following along as Mattis rises from Marine recruit to four-star general. It is a journey about learning to lead and a story about how he, through constant study and action, developed a unique leadership philosophy, one relevant to us all.

Join us each month to discuss a pre-selected book presenting a foreign policy topic. First Wednesday of each month (12pm).

We are proud to partner with the Loudoun County Public Library who makes available multiple copies of this book for checkout at the Rust Library.

The End of Ambition: Americas’s Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East

By Steven A. Cook

The End of Ambition offers a clear-headed vision for the United States' role in the Middle East that highlights the changing nature of US national interests and the challenges of grand strategizing at a time of profound change in the international order.

Following a long series of catastrophic misadventures in the Middle East over the last two decades, the American foreign policy community has tried to understand what went wrong. After weighing the evidence, they have mostly advised a retreat from the region. The basic view is that when the United States tries to advance change in the Middle East, it only makes matters worse.

Author Steven A. Cook argues that while these analysts are rightly concerned that engagement drains US resources and distorts its domestic politics, the broader impulse to disengage tends to neglect important lessons from the past and overlook the potential risks of withdrawal. Covering the relationship between the US and the Middle East since the end of WWII, Cook makes the bold claim that despite setbacks and moral costs, the United States has been overwhelmingly successful in protecting its core national interests in the Middle East. Conversely, overly ambitious policies to remake the region and leverage US power not only ended in failure, but rendered the region unstable in new and largely misunderstood ways.

While making the case that retrenchment is not the answer to America's problems in the Middle East, The End of Ambition highlights how America's interests in the region have begun to change and critically examines alternative approaches to US-Middle East policy.

Join us each month to discuss a pre-selected book presenting a foreign policy topic. First Wednesday of each month (12pm).

We are proud to partner with the Loudoun County Public Library who makes available multiple copies of this book for checkout at the Rust Library.

Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point

BY Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

America is undergoing a massive experiment: It is moving, in fits and starts, toward a multiracial democracy, something few societies have ever done. But the prospect of change has sparked an authoritarian backlash that threatens the very foundations of our political system. Why is democracy under assault here, and not in other wealthy, diversifying nations? And what can we do to save it?

With the clarity and brilliance that made their first book, How Democracies Die, a global bestseller, Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt offer a coherent framework for understanding these volatile times. They draw on a wealth of examples—from 1930s France to present-day Thailand—to explain why and how political parties turn against democracy. They then show how our Constitution makes us uniquely vulnerable to attacks from within: It is a pernicious enabler of minority rule, allowing partisan minorities to consistently thwart and even rule over popular majorities. Most modern democracies—from Germany and Sweden to Argentina and New Zealand—have eliminated outdated institutions like elite upper chambers, indirect elections, and lifetime tenure for judges. The United States lags dangerously behind.

In this revelatory book, Levitsky and Ziblatt issue an urgent call to reform our politics. It’s a daunting task, but we have remade our country before—most notably, after the Civil War and during the Progressive Era. And now we are at a crossroads: America will either become a multiracial democracy or cease to be a democracy at all.

Join us each month to discuss a pre-selected book presenting a foreign policy topic. First Wednesday of each month (12pm).

We are proud to partner with the Loudoun County Public Library who makes available multiple copies of this book for checkout at the Rust Library.

New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion and America’s Struggle to Defend the West

BY David E. Sanger

New Cold Wars—the latest from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of The Perfect Weapon David E. Sanger—is a fast-paced account of America’s plunge into simultaneous confrontations with two very different adversaries. For years, the United States was confident that the newly democratic Russia and increasingly wealthy China could be lured into a Western-led order that promised prosperity and relative peace—so long as they agreed to Washington’s terms. By the time America emerged from the age of terrorism, it was clear that this had been a fantasy.

Now the three powers are engaged in a high-stakes struggle for military, economic, political, and technological supremacy, with nations around the world pressured to take sides. Yet all three are discovering that they are maneuvering for influence in a far more turbulent world than they imagined.

Based on a remarkable array of interviews with top officials from five presidential administrations, U.S. intelligence agencies, foreign governments, and tech companies, Sanger unfolds a riveting narrative spun around the era’s critical questions: Will the mistakes Putin made in his invasion of Ukraine prove his undoing and will he reach for his nuclear arsenal—or will the West’s famously short attention span signal Kyiv’s doom? Will Xi invade Taiwan? Will both men deepen their partnership to undercut America’s dominance? And can a politically dysfunctional America still lead the world?

Taking listeners from the battlefields of Ukraine—where trench warfare and cyberwarfare are interwoven—to the Taiwan headquarters where the world’s most advanced computer chips are produced and on to tense debates in the White House Situation Room, New Cold Wars is a remarkable first-draft history chronicling America’s return to superpower conflict, the choices that lie ahead, and what is at stake for the United States and the world.

Join us each month to discuss a pre-selected book presenting a foreign policy topic. First Wednesday of each month (12pm).

We are proud to partner with the Loudoun County Public Library who makes available multiple copies of this book for checkout at the Rust Library.

World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the 21st Century

BY Dmitri Alperovitch with Garrett M. Graff

The leading national security expert who predicted Putin’s intention to invade Ukraine argues that China’s Xi Jinping is preparing to conquer Taiwan in the coming years—with dire stakes for America and the world if he is not deterred

We are fully in the midst of Cold War II, this time with China. Taiwan is a new West Berlin, a perilous strategic flashpoint where localized events could trigger a devastating war between nuclear powers.
 
But this outcome is far from inevitable. Laying out the grand strategy for the United States and allies to avoid this fate, the highly respected security analyst Dmitri Alperovitch reveals key actions that could enable America to win the race for the twenty-first century. This sharp, timely book is the essential blueprint for preventing a catastrophe.

Join us each month to discuss a pre-selected book presenting a foreign policy topic. First Wednesday of each month (12pm).

We are proud to partner with the Loudoun County Public Library who makes available multiple copies of this book for checkout at the Rust Library.

By All Means Available

BY Michael Vickers

In 1984, Michael Vickers took charge of the CIA’s secret war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. After inheriting a strategy aimed at imposing costs on the Soviets for their invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, Vickers transformed the covert campaign into an all-out effort to help the Afghan resistance win their war. More than any other American, he was responsible for the outcome in Afghanistan, which helped trigger the last chapter of the Cold War.

In By All Means Available, Vickers recounts his remarkable career, from his days as a Green Beret to his vision for victory in Afghanistan to his role in waging America’s war with Al-Qaeda at the highest levels of government. He depicts his years in the Special Forces—including his training to parachute behind enemy lines with a backpack nuclear weapon in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe—and reveals how those experiences directly influenced his approach to shaping policy. Vickers has played a significant role in most of the military and intelligence operations of the past four decades, and he offers an informed analysis of the greatest challenges facing America today and in the decades ahead.

Join us each month to discuss a pre-selected book presenting a foreign policy topic. First Wednesday of each month (12pm).

We are proud to partner with the Loudoun County Public Library who makes available multiple copies of this book for checkout at the Rust Library.

Myths About Israel

BY Ilan Pappe

In Ten Myths About Israel, outspoken Israeli historian Ilan Pappe examines the most contested ideas concerning the origins and identity of the contemporary state of Israel. Pappe contends that the “ten myths” outlined in his book reinforce the regional status quo. He explores the claim that Palestine was an empty land at the time of the Balfour Declaration, the formation of Zionism and its role in the early decades of nation building, and whether the Palestinians voluntarily left their homeland in 1948, among other topics.

Join us each month to discuss a pre-selected book presenting a foreign policy topic. First Wednesday of each month (12pm).

We are proud to partner with the Loudoun County Public Library who makes available multiple copies of this book for checkout at the Rust Library.

The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

By Richard Haass

In The Bill of Obligations, Council on Foreign Relations President and New York Times best-selling author Dr. Richard Haass offers a provocative guide to how we must reenvision citizenship if American democracy is to survive.

The Bill of Rights is at the center of our Constitution, yet our most intractable conflicts often emerge from contrasting views as to what our rights ought to be. As former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer pointed out, “Many of our cases, the most difficult ones, are not about right versus wrong. They are about right versus right.” The lesson is clear: rights alone cannot provide the basis for a functioning, much less flourishing, democracy.

Haass offers a cure: to place obligations on the same footing as rights. The ten obligations that Haass introduces here are essential for healing our divisions and safeguarding the country’s future. These obligations reenvision what it means to be an American citizen. They are not a burden but rather commitments that we can make to fellow citizens and to the government to uphold democracy and counter the growing apathy, anger, selfishness, division, disinformation and violence that threaten us all. Through an expert blend of civics, history and political analysis, this book illuminates how Americans can rediscover and recover the attitudes and behaviors that have contributed so much to this country’s success over the centuries.

Join us each month to discuss a pre-selected book presenting a foreign policy topic. First Wednesday of each month (12pm).

We are proud to partner with the Loudoun County Public Library who makes available multiple copies of this book for checkout at the Rust Library.

Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War

By Howard W. French

In a sweeping narrative spanning more than six centuries, Born in Blackness vitally reframes the story of medieval and emerging Africa, demonstrating how the economic ascendancy of Europe, the anchoring of democracy in the West, and the fulfillment of so-called Enlightenment ideals all grew out of Europe’s dehumanizing engagement with the “dark” continent. In fact, French argues, the first impetus for the Age of Discovery was not—as we are so often told, even today—Europe’s yearning for ties with Asia, but rather its centuries-old desire to forge a trade in gold with legendarily rich Black societies in the heart of West Africa.

“This book is filled with countless eyeopeners… All history is, by definition, revisionist. In connecting the various dots, French is inviting us to reconsider what we understand about how we got here.... Painful and necessary… [an] infuriating and hugely enlightening book.”
— Dele Olojede - Financial Times

Howard W. French is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a former New York Times bureau chief for the Caribbean and Central America, West and Central Africa, Tokyo and Shanghai. The author of five books, he lives in New York City.

Join us each month to discuss a pre-selected book presenting a foreign policy topic. First Wednesday of each month (12pm).

We are proud to partner with the Loudoun County Public Library who makes available multiple copies of this book for checkout at the Rust Library.

The Age of AI And Our Human Future

By Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schimidt and Daniel Huttenlocher

In The Age of AI, three of the world’s most accomplished and deep thinkers – the late statesman Henry Kissinger, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and MIT’s Daniel Huttenlocher – come together to explore artificial intelligence (AI), how it is transforming human society and what this technology means for us all.

Generative AI is filling the internet with false information. Artists, writers and many other professionals fear for their jobs. AI is discovering new medicines, running military drones and transforming the world around us—yet we do not understand the decisions it makes, and we don’t know how to control them.

The Age of AI is an essential roadmap to our present and our future, an era unlike any other.

Join us each month to discuss a pre-selected book presenting a foreign policy topic. First Wednesday of each month (12pm).

We are proud to partner with the Loudoun County Public Library who makes available multiple copies of this book for checkout at the Rust Library.

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin

BY Erik Larson

Set in Berlin in 1933-1934, In the Garden of Beasts tells the story of America’s ambassador to Nazi Germany, William E. Dodd, and his daughter Martha, as they witness the rising terror of Hitler’s rule. At first Martha is enthralled by the parties and pomp, as well as the handsome young men of the Third Reich, with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the “New Germany,” she has one affair after another, including with the first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels.

Her father resolves not to prejudge the new government, but soon the shadows deepen. Jews are attacked, the press is censored and drafts of frightening new laws circulate. As that first year unfolds, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance—and ultimately horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder unmasks Hitler’s true character and ruthless ambition.

Join us each month to discuss a pre-selected book presenting a foreign policy topic. First Wednesday of each month (12pm).

We are proud to partner with the Loudoun County Public Library who makes available multiple copies of this book for checkout at the Rust Library.

Against All Odds: A True Story of Ultimate Courage and Survival in World War II

BY Alex Kershaw

Join us for a special book club event with New York Times best-selling author Alex Kershaw, who will join us for a lively discussion of his recent work: Against All Odds: A True Story of Ultimate Courage and Survival in World War II.

Against All Odds tells the story four men, all in the same unit, who earned medal after medal for battlefield heroism as the Allies raced to defeat Hitler. Maurice “Footsie” Britt, a former professional football player, became the first American to receive every award for valor in a single war. Michael Daly was a West Point dropout who risked his neck over and over to keep his men alive. Keith Ware would one day become the first and only draftee in history to attain the rank of general. In WWII, Ware owed his life to the finest soldier he ever commanded, a baby-faced Texan named Audie Murphy. In the campaign to liberate Europe, each would gain the ultimate accolade, the Congressional Medal of Honor.
 
Tapping into personal interviews and a wealth of primary source material, Alex Kershaw has delivered his most gripping account yet of American courage, spanning more than 600 days of increasingly merciless combat, from the deserts of North Africa to the dark heart of Nazi Germany. Once the guns fell silent, these four exceptional warriors would discover just how heavy the Medal of Honor could be—and how great the expectations associated with it. Having survived against all odds, who among them would finally find peace?

Join us each month to discuss a pre-selected book presenting a foreign policy topic. First Wednesday of each month (12pm).

We are proud to partner with the Loudoun County Public Library who makes available multiple copies of this book for checkout at the Rust Library.

PARTNERS IN COMMAND: GEORGE MARSHALL AND DWIGHT EISENHOWER IN WAR AND PEACE

BY MARK PERRY

The first book ever to explore the relationship between George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower, Partners in Command eloquently tackles a subject that has eluded historians for years. As Mark Perry charts the crucial impact of this duo on victory in World War II and later as they lay the foundation for triumph in the Cold War, he shows us an unlikely, complex collaboration at the heart of decades of successful American foreign policy-and shatters many of the myths that have evolved about these two great men and the issues that tested their alliance. As exciting to read as it is vitally informative, this work is a signal accomplishment.

Join us each month to discuss a pre-selected book presenting a foreign policy topic. We run book clubs every first Wednesday of each month (12pm).

We are proud to partner with the Loudoun County Public Library who makes available multiple copies of this book for checkout at the Rust Library.

HOW CIVIL WARS START

BY BARBARA F. WALTER

“How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them” by New York Times bestselling author Barbara F. Walter.

 In this urgent and insightful book, Walter redefines civil war for a new age, providing the framework we need to confront the danger we now face—and the knowledge to stop it before it’s too late.

“As democracies across the world backslide and citizens become more polarized, civil wars will become even more widespread and last longer than they have in the past. This urgent and important book shows us a path back toward peace.”

Join us each month to discuss a pre-selected book presenting a foreign policy topic. We run book clubs every first Wednesday of each month (12pm).

We are proud to partner with the Loudoun County Public Library who makes available multiple copies of this book for checkout at the Rust Library.

SEA POWER: THE HISTORY AND GEOPOLITICS OF THE WORLD’S OCEANS

BY ADMIRAL JAMES STAVRIDIS, USN (RET.)

From one of the most admired admirals of his generation - and the only admiral to serve as supreme allied commander at NATO - comes a remarkable voyage through all of the world's most important bodies of water, providing the story of naval power as a driver of human history and a crucial element in our current geopolitical path.

From the time of the Greeks and the Persians clashing in the Mediterranean, sea power has determined world power. To an extent that is often underappreciated, it still does. No one understands this better than Admiral Jim Stavridis. In Sea Power, Admiral Stavridis takes us with him on a tour of the world's oceans from the admiral's chair, showing us how the geography of the oceans has shaped the destinies of nations and how naval power has in a real sense made the world we live in today and will shape the world we live in tomorrow.

Not least, Sea Power is marvelous naval history, giving us fresh insight into great naval engagements from the battles of Salamis and Lepanto through to Trafalgar, the Battle of the Atlantic, and submarine conflicts of the Cold War. It is also a keen-eyed reckoning with the likely sites of our next major naval conflicts, particularly the Arctic Ocean, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the South China Sea. Finally, Sea Power steps back to take a holistic view of the plagues to our oceans that are best seen that way, from piracy to pollution.

When most of us look at a globe, we focus on the shape of the seven continents. Admiral Stavridis sees the shapes of the seven seas. After listening to Sea Power, you will, too. Not since Alfred Thayer Mahan's legendary The Influence of Sea Power upon History have we had such a powerful reckoning with this vital subject.

Join us each month to discuss a pre-selected book presenting a foreign policy topic. We run book clubs every first Wednesday of each month (12pm).

We are proud to partner with the Loudoun County Public Library who makes available multiple copies of this book for checkout at the Rust Library.

THE ORIENTALIST: SOLVING THE MYSTERY OF A STRANGE AND DANGEROUS LIFE

BY TOM REISS

Part history, part cultural biography, and part literary mystery, The Orientalist traces the life of Lev Nussimbaum, a Jew who transformed himself into a Muslim prince and became a best-selling author in Nazi Germany. 

Born in 1905 to a wealthy family in the oil-boom city of Baku, at the edge of the czarist empire, Lev escaped the Russian Revolution in a camel caravan.  He found refuge in Germany, where, writing under the names Essad Bey and Kurban Said, his remarkable books about Islam, desert adventures, and global revolution, became celebrated across fascist Europe.  His enduring masterpiece, Ali and Nino–a story of love across ethnic and religious boundaries, published on the eve of the Holocaust–is still in print today.

But Lev’s life grew wilder than his wildest stories.  He married an international heiress who had no idea of his true identity–until she divorced him in a tabloid scandal.  His closest friend in New York, George Sylvester Viereck–also a friend of both Freud’s and Einstein’s–was arrested as the leading Nazi agent in the United States.  Lev was invited to be Mussolini’s official biographer–until the Fascists discovered his “true” identity.  Under house arrest in the Amalfi cliff town of Positano, Lev wrote his last book–discovered in a half a dozen notebooks never before read by anyone–helped by a mysterious half-German salon hostess, an Algerian weapons-smuggler, and the poet Ezra Pound. 

Tom Reiss spent five years tracking down secret police records, love letters, diaries, and the deathbed notebooks.  Beginning with a yearlong investigation for The New Yorker, he pursued Lev’s story across ten countries and found himself caught up in encounters as dramatic and surreal, and sometimes as heartbreaking, as his subject’s life.  Reiss’s quest for the truth buffets him from one weird character to the next: from the last heir of the Ottoman throne to a rock opera-composing baroness in an Austrian castle, to an aging starlet in a Hollywood bungalow full of cats and turtles.

As he tracks down the pieces of Lev Nussimbaum’s deliberately obscured life, Reiss discovers a series of shadowy worlds–of European pan-Islamists, nihilist assassins, anti-Nazi book smugglers, Baku oil barons, Jewish Orientalists–that have also been forgotten.  The result is a thoroughly unexpected picture of the twentieth century–of the origins of our ideas about race and religious self-definition, and of the roots of modern fanaticism and terrorism.  Written with grace and infused with wonder, The Orientalist is an astonishing book.

Join us each month to discuss a pre-selected book presenting a foreign policy topic. We run book clubs every first Wednesday of each month (12pm).

We are proud to partner with the Loudoun County Public Library who makes available multiple copies of this book for checkout at the Rust Library.

BY BRUCE W. JENTLESON

A concise, authoritative overview of a little-understood yet extremely important phenomenon in world politics: the use of economic sanctions by one country to punish another.

It's hard to browse the news without seeing reports of yet another imposition of sanctions by one country on another. The United States has sanctions against more than 30 countries. Russia has repeatedly imposed sanctions against former Soviet republics. China has developed its own approach, including targeting private entities such as the NBA. And it's not just major powers: Japan and South Korea have sanctioned each other over WWII and colonial legacies; Saudi Arabia against Qatar because of differences over Iran; and France, Germany, and Norway against Brazil over the Amazon forest and climate change. In Sanctions: What Everyone Needs to Know®, Bruce Jentleson--one of America's leading scholars on the subject--answers the fundamental questions about sanctions today: Why are they used so much? What are their varieties? What are the key factors affecting their success? Why have they become the tool of first resort for states engaged in international conflict? Jentleson demonstrates
that examining sanctions is key to understanding international relations and explains how and why they will likely continue to bear on global politics.

Join us each month to discuss a pre-selected book presenting a foreign policy topic. We run book clubs every first Wednesday of each month (12pm).

We are proud to partner with the Loudoun County Public Library who makes available multiple copies of this book for checkout at the Rust Library.

THE WOMAN WHO SMASHED CODES: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine who Outwitted America’s Enemies

by Jason Fagone

Joining the ranks of Hidden Figures and In the Garden of Beasts, the incredible true story of the greatest codebreaking duo that ever lived, an American woman and her husband who invented the modern science of cryptology together and used it to confront the evils of their time, solving puzzles that unmasked Nazi spies and helped win World War II.

In 1912, at the height of World War I, brilliant Shakespeare expert Elizebeth Smith went to work for an eccentric tycoon on his estate outside Chicago. The tycoon had close ties to the US government, and he soon asked Elizebeth to apply her language skills to an exciting new venture: code breaking. There she met the man who would become her husband, groundbreaking cryptologist William Friedman. Though she and Friedman are in many ways the Adam and Eve of the NSA, Elizebeth's story, incredibly, has never been told.

In The Woman Who Smashed Codes, Jason Fagone chronicles the life of this extraordinary woman, who played an integral role in our nation's history for 40 years. After World War I, Smith used her talents to catch gangsters and smugglers during Prohibition, then accepted a covert mission to discover and expose Nazi spy rings that were spreading like wildfire across South America, advancing ever closer to the United States. As World War II raged, Elizabeth fought a highly classified battle of wits against Hitler's Reich, cracking multiple versions of the Enigma machine used by German spies. Meanwhile, inside an army vault in Washington, William worked furiously to break Purple, the Japanese version of Enigma - and eventually succeeded, at a terrible cost to his personal life.

Fagone unveils America's code-breaking history through the prism of Smith's life, bringing into focus the unforgettable events and colorful personalities that would help shape modern intelligence. Blending the lively pace and compelling detail that are the hallmarks of Erik Larson's best sellers with the atmosphere and intensity of The Imitation Game, The Woman Who Smashed Codes is riveting popular history at its finest.

Join us each month to discuss a pre-selected book presenting a foreign policy topic. We run book clubs every first Wednesday of each month (12pm).

We are proud to partner with the Loudoun County Public Library who makes available multiple copies of this book for checkout at the Rust Library.