Political Science Course Guide - Indianapolis

Worldmark Encyclopedia of the Nations presents easy-to-understand information on 200 countries and dependencies from around the world. Entries range from four to 30 pages and reveal details on a variety of topics -- from banking and securities to climate, and from government data to demographic statistics.

Tim Marshall, the New York Times bestselling author of Prisoners of Geography, analyzes the most urgent and tenacious topics in global politics and international relations by examining the borders, walls, and boundaries that divide countries and their populations. The globe has always been a world of walls, from the Great Wall of China to Hadrian's Wall to the Berlin Wall. But a new age of isolationism and economic nationalism is upon us, visible not just in Trump's obsession with building a wall on the Mexico border or in Britain's Brexit vote but in many other places as well. China has the great Firewall, holding back Western culture. Europe's countries are walling themselves against immigrants, terrorism, and currency issues. South Africa has heavily gated communities, and massive walls or fences separate people in the Middle East, Korea, Sudan, India, and other places around the world. In fact, at least sixty-five countries, more than a third of the world's nation-states, have barriers along their borders. There are many reasons why walls go up, because we are divided in many ways: wealth, race, religion, and politics, to name a few. Understanding what is behind these divisions is essential to understanding much of what's going on in the world today. As with Marshall's first two books, The Age of Walls is a brisk read, divided by geographic region. He provides an engaging context that is often missing from political discussion and draws on his real life experiences as a reporter from hotspots around the globe. He examines how walls (which Marshall calls "monuments to the failure of politics"), borders, and barriers have been shaping our political landscape for hundreds of years, and especially since 2001, and how they figure in the diplomatic relations and geo-political events of today.

SOON TO BE AN HBO® DOCUMENTARY FROM AWARD-WINNING DIRECTOR JOHN MAGGIO * "An important--and deeply sobering--new book about cyberwarfare" (Nicholas Kristof, New York Times) The Perfect Weapon is the startling inside story of how the rise of cyberweapons transformed geopolitics like nothing since the invention of the atomic bomb. Cheap to acquire, easy to deny, and usable for a variety of malicious purposes, cyber is now the weapon of choice for democracies, dictators, and terrorists. Two presidents--Bush and Obama--drew first blood with Operation Olympic Games, which used malicious code to blow up Iran's nuclear centrifuges, and yet America proved remarkably unprepared when its own weapons were stolen from its arsenal and, during President Trump's first year, turned back on the United States and its allies. And if Obama would begin his presidency by helping to launch the new era of cyberwar, he would end it struggling unsuccessfully to defend against Russia's broad attack on the 2016 US election.  Moving from the White House Situation Room to the dens of Chinese government hackers to the boardrooms of Silicon Valley, New York Times national security correspondent David Sanger reveals a world coming face-to-face with the perils of technological revolution, where everyone is a target. "Timely and bracing . . . With the deep knowledge and bright clarity that have long characterized his work, Sanger recounts the cunning and dangerous development of cyberspace into the global battlefield of the 21st century." --Washington Post

"Speak softly and carry a big stick" Theodore Roosevelt famously said in 1901, when the United States was emerging as a great power. It was the right sentiment, perhaps, in an age of imperial rivalry but today many Americans doubt the utility of their global military presence, thinking it outdated, unnecessary or even dangerous. In The Big Stick, Eliot A. Cohen-a scholar and practitioner of international relations-disagrees. He argues that hard power remains essential for American foreign policy. While acknowledging that the US must be careful about why, when, and how it uses force, he insists that its international role is as critical as ever, and armed force is vital to that role. Cohen explains that American leaders must learn to use hard power in new ways and for new circumstances. The rise of a well-armed China, Russia's conquest of Crimea and eastern Ukraine, nuclear threats from North Korea and Iran, and the spread of radical Islamist movements like ISIS are some of the key threats to global peace. If the United States relinquishes its position as a strong but prudent military power, and fails to accept its role as the guardian of a stable world order we run the risk of unleashing disorder, violence and tyranny on a scale not seen since the 1930s. The US is still, as Madeleine Albright once dubbed it, "the indispensable nation."

In the early years of the Cold War, Western nations increasingly adopted strategies of public diplomacy involving popular music. While the diplomatic use of popular music was initially limited to such genres as jazz, the second half of the 20th century saw a growing presence of various popular genres in diplomatic contexts, including rock, punk, reggae, and hip-hop. This volume illuminates the interrelation of popular music and public diplomacy from a transnational and transdisciplinary angle. The contributions argue that, as popular music has been a crucial factor in international relations, its diplomatic use has substantially impacted the global musical landscape of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The book is the result of a collective research work between the members of the team of the project "Over the Atlantic" (co-founded by the Erasmus + programme). A critical introduction presents the work, the content and the scope of the research, carried out with an interdisciplinary approach. This book consists of three main parts. The first discusses the institutionalization and normalization of paradiplomacy in some specific and well-documented case studies regarding the Latin America region. The second one refers to the relationship between paradiplomacy and cooperation in the context of international and regional relations. The third part analyses Cities and Parliaments as international diplomatic actors. The theme of Paradiplomacy, as a means of unofficial relationships that reacts differently to the pressure of the international system, and the role of the local authorities, despite its relevance and importance, is scarcely analysed by academia.