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Source: Getty
Time for Strategic Europe’s annual summer reading suggestions! Carnegie Europe has asked a cross-section of diplomats, policymakers, and analysts to share their favorite books.
Time for Strategic Europe’s annual summer reading suggestions! Carnegie Europe has asked a cross-section of diplomats, policymakers, and analysts to share their favorite books. The full selection of reading lists is available here.
Foreign Policy
Germany matters, so in combination: Germany: Memories of a Nation by Neil MacGregor, with wonderful illustrations and insight, based on the British Museum exhibition; and Reluctant Meister: How Germany’s Past is Shaping its European Future by Stephen Green.
Fiction
Preparation for the Next Life by Atticus Lish. A deeply moving and deeply reported novel about an illegal Chinese immigrant and an Iraqi war veteran, struggling to make a life in the far boroughs of New York City.
Home Country (United States)
The Harder They Come by T. C. Boyle. A great novel of Californian and American obsessions with independence, the wilderness, and violence—but with a weak title, presumably derived from the Jimmy Cliff movie.
Guilty Pleasure
Not so guilty, but the novels of Kent Haruf, who recently died, about the people of a Colorado town of the imagination. Especially Plainsong and Benediction.
Foreign Policy
China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa by Howard French. This is an amazing story about the million or more Chinese settlers who are remaking the African continent and pioneering a new model of globalization. That model is defined not by the West but by Chinese entrepreneurs, banks, and construction companies who roam the planet in search of outlets for their money and goods and the markets and raw materials needed to sustain China’s growth.
Fiction
The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq. The map is more interesting than the territory according to the protagonist in this typically cynical tome by one of France’s most controversial authors. The book provides a sobering picture of the future available to European countries such as France in a world where economic and military power are moving elsewhere.
Home Country (United Kingdom)
The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia’s New Geopolitics by Andrew Small. With America withdrawing from Afghanistan and China launching its monumentally ambitious Silk Road projects, Small’s remarkable book could not be more topical. It shines a light on China’s most intense and secretive relationship, which was forged in the Cold War but which now offers the prospect of helping China move from being a regional to a global power by building a series of ports, pipelines, and other connections with the rest of the world.
Foreign Policy
The Great Powers and Poland, 1919–1945: From Versailles to Yalta by Jan Karski. The Polish courier who told U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt about the Holocaust was also a considerable scholar.
Fiction
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh. Every war reporter’s must-read on how to grab your readers’ attention.
Home Country (Poland)
Madame by Antoni Libera. A brilliant rendering of an anti-Communist childhood in Communist Poland.
Guilty Pleasure
Lucky Bastard by Charles McCarry. A spoof of a political thriller with a testosterone overdose.
Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
EU member states clash over how to boost the union’s competitiveness: Some want to favor European industries in public procurement, while others worry this could deter foreign investment. So, can the EU simultaneously attract global capital and reduce dependencies?
Rym Momtaz, ed.
Leaning into a multispeed Europe that includes the UK is the way Europeans don’t get relegated to suffering what they must, while the mighty United States and China do what they want.
Rym Momtaz
A prophetic Romanian novel about a town at the mouth of the Danube carries a warning: Europe decays when it stops looking outward. In a world of increasing insularity, the EU should heed its warning.
Thomas de Waal
The EU lacks leadership and strategic planning in the South Caucasus, while the United States is leading the charge. To secure its geopolitical interests, Brussels must invest in new connectivity for the region.
Zaur Shiriyev
In return for a trade deal and the release of political prisoners, the United States has lifted sanctions on Belarus, breaking the previous Western policy consensus. Should Europeans follow suit, using their leverage to extract concessions from Lukashenko, or continue to isolate a key Kremlin ally?
Thomas de Waal, ed.