Joseph M. Siracusa

David G. Coleman

Looking at how nuclear deterrence has actually worked rather than how it should theoretically work, Coleman and Siracusa put the problems of nuclear deterrence over the past sixty years into global context and apply historical lessons to the current state of world affairs.

The Making of International Strategy

Real-world Nuclear Deterrence

Timothy J. Naftali

This is presidential power in its rawest form, revealed alongside the private vulnerabilities of the world's most public man.

The Winds of Change

John F. Kennedy

Joseph Siracusa

Organized around the office of the president, this study focuses on American behavior at home and abroad from the Great Depression to the onset of the end of the Cold War, two key points during which America sought a re-definition of its proper relationship to the world. Domestically, American society continued the process of industrialization and urbanization that had begun in the 19th century. Urban growth accompanied industrialism, and more and more Americans lived in cities. Because of industrial growth and the consequent interest in foreign markets, the United States became a major world power. American actions as a nation, whether as positive attempts to mold events abroad or as negative efforts to enjoy material abundance in relative political isolation, could not help but affect the course of world history. Under President Hoover, the federal government was still a comparatively small enterprise; challenges of the next six decades would transform it almost beyond belief, touching in one way or another almost every facet of American life. Before the New Deal, few Americans expected the government to do anything for them. By the end of the Second World War and in the aftermath of the Great Depression, however, Americans had turned to Washington for help. Even the popular Reagan presidency of the 1980s, the most conservative since Hoover, would fail to undo the basic New Deal commitment to assist struggling Americans. There would be no turning back the clock, at home or abroad.

David G. Coleman

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