The book considers biology in parallel with philosophical structuralism in order to argue that notions of form in the organism are analogous to similar ideas in structuralist philosophy and literary theory. This analogy is then used to shed light on debates among biological scientists from the turn of the 19th century to the present day, including Cuvier, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Dawkins, Crick, Goodwin, Rosen and West-Eberhard. The book critiques the endorsement of genetic manipulation and bioengineering as keys to solving agricultural and environmental problems, suggesting that alternative models have been marginalized in the promotion of this discourse. Drawing from the work of philosophers including Cassirer, Saussure, Jakobson and Foucault the book ultimately argues that methods based on agroecology, supported by molecular applications (such as marker-assisted selection, MAS), can both advance agricultural development and remain focused on the whole organism.

This book focuses on three main subjects: the DPRK's inability to survive as a nuclear state; the importance of China's role in encouraging denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula; and the possibility of an alternative political organization for the DPRK including a transition to a market-economy in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons. The book approaches North Korean issues from the perspective that the regime cannot survive without nuclear weapons which, rather than being a genuine danger to other states, are bargaining chips for security and survival. The book includes views from prominent academics and practitioners, including a former British ambassador to North Korea, putting forward an ambitious set of recommendations and analyses based on hands-on experience in the region.

Conspicuously missing from narratives of the Lebanese Civil War are the stories of women who took part in daily social activism and political organizing during the tumultuous conflict. What the War Left Behind documents their stories, with eight women directly sharing their experiences of action and survival through the hardship of war.

What the War Left Behind brings together oral histories of women from a range of political affiliations, socioeconomic classes, and religious identities. These histories present an alternative image of women during war, highlighting the actions of those who sought to make life better for themselves and their neighbors during conflict. By centering women's voices in the war, Abisaab and Hartman present a new perspective on an oft-discussed historical era, demonstrating the power of resistance during difficult times. These translated texts showcase the active roles women take during wartime and how women's political efforts are an essential part of Lebanese history.

This book provides perspectives on the relevance of European Studies as a disciplinary category for the Asian region. That being the primary focus, the book serves a larger purpose. First, it provides insights on European society, polity and economy (including European Integration) as they are accounted in European Studies. The epistemological character of the knowledge thus conveyed has larger credibility and reliability such that they can become policy inputs and imaginations for strengthening Asian-European relationship. This approach helps overcome the trap of subjectively motivated discourses on Europe which may fail potential collaborations between the regions. Second, the design and discursivity of European Studies will be an instruction to the Asian region on the constitutive potential of regional studies in society-building. Third, the book works towards building the idea of "Europe" in terms of international law, in the minds of Asian students, researchers and decision-makers. This is extremely relevant for the future relationship and cultural engagement between the two regions. The book is of interest to policymakers, academics, embassies, state-level government offices, researchers and students.

The Power to Persuade provides an innovative and eye-opening analysis of strategic arguing as a means of power in global politics. Based on an empirical case study of arguing processes in the World Trade Organization (WTO), the book shows how discursive contexts, institutional norms and procedures, and unequal human resources condition who has the power to persuade.

While accounts of arguing in international relations are typically based on a notion of arguing as a power-free mode of interaction oriented towards understanding, Angela Geck shows how such an approach precludes the question of persuasive power. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Geneva diplomats and a document-based analysis of the negotiations on two Doha Round issues, the book examines the practices governing strategic arguing in the WTO and uncovers two sources of persuasive power: firstly, prevalent discourses and connected regime norms empower some actors over others; secondly, their ability to debate is conditioned by exclusionary procedures and unequal human resources.

Offering a grounded theory of strategic arguing in trade politics, The Power to Persuade presents a novel analysis of the relationship between arguing and power.

In Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Federal Highway Act, Charles Zug contests all these assumptions. Through archival research, Zug shows that Eisenhower's attempt to lead highway expansion during 1952-1955 ended in dismal failure. Far from championing the separation of powers, Eisenhower sought to marginalize Congress from the legislative process by secretly writing a transformative highway bill within the confines of his White House. And once it was announced, Eisenhower's highway plan was almost universally panned: Ike's own comptroller general deemed the plan's funding mechanism "illegal" before a bipartisan majority laughed it out of the Senate in the spring of 1955. The highway bill that did eventually pass Congress in 1956, and that went on to launch the modern interstate system, was written by congressional Democrats and emphatically rejected Eisenhower's basic approach to highway reform.

Drawing on executive politics, American political development, and leadership studies, Zug uses the Federal Highway Act to argue for a foundational reassessment of Eisenhower's legacy as highway founder, president, and political leader.

What America's intervention in Cambodia during the Vietnam War reveals about Cold War-era U.S. national security strategy

The Apathy of Empire reveals just how significant Cambodia was to U.S. policy in Indochina during the Vietnam War, broadening the lens to include more than the often-cited incursion in 1970 or the illegal bombing after the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. This theoretically informed and thoroughly documented case study argues that U.S. military intervention in Cambodia revealed America's efforts to construct a hegemonic spatial world order.

James Tyner documents the shift of America's post-1945 focus from national defense to national security. He demonstrates that America's expansionist policies abroad, often bolstered by military power, were not so much about occupying territory but instead constituted the construction of a new normal for the exercise of state power. During the Cold War, Vietnam became the geopolitical lodestar of this unfolding spatial order. And yet America's grand strategy was one of contradiction: to build a sovereign state (South Vietnam) based on democratic liberalism, it was necessary to protect its boundaries-in effect, to isolate it-through both covert and overt operations in violation of Cambodia's sovereignty. The latter was deemed necessary for the former.

Questioning reductionist geopolitical understandings of states as central or peripheral, Tyner explores this paradox to rethink the formulation of the Cambodian war as sideshow, revealing it instead as a crucial site for the formation of this new normal.

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While crisis brings rapid change, there are other factors at work as well. Increased polarization has led presidents of both parties to press existing rules and norms to their limits in an attempt to accomplish more during their brief tenures. The result is a lot of policy and structural change in a short period, including new cabinet departments, new election rules, and significantly increased spending and debt, among other things. For the most part, these changes have occurred with little thought to what it all means for the functionality and stability of our democratic institutions and, consequently, our nation's capacity to address the needs as well as the aspirations of the American people.

The Bipartisan Policy Center's Tevi Troy has brought together a group of presidential scholars and political experts to address these important issues and to reflect on how the presidency has changed and what it might mean for the future. Contributors include Elaine Kamarck (former aide to President Clinton), Jonathan Burks (former chief of staff to Speaker Paul Ryan), Kenneth Baer (former aide to presidents Clinton and Obama), and Kristen Soltis Anderson (Republican pollster and radio host).

This book focuses on the triangular relations between China, the United States and the European Union from the perspective of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) via the methodology of international political economy. China, the US and the EU are the three most important players in international politics and the global economy, and their relations are accordingly among the most influential in the global arena. This book will argue that the interactions between China, the US and the EU are highly dynamic given their close connections in trade, finance and many other economic fields. In the context of US-China competition, the decisions of the EU, which has sought to remain independent in its foreign policy for decades, crucially shape the landscape of international politics, and lucidly articulates how international relations look from China to scholars of geopolitics.

Traces Japan's efforts to modernize Taiwan through gendered educational practicesIn Good Wife, Wise Mother, female education and citizenship serve as a lens through which to examine Taiwan's uniqueness as a colonial crossroads between Chinese and Japanese ideas and practices. A latecomer to the age of imperialism, Japan used modernization efforts in Taiwan to cast itself as a benevolent force among its colonial subjects and imperial competitors. In contrast to most European colonies, where only elites received an education, in Taiwan Japan built elementary schools intended for the entire population, including girls. In 1897 it developed a program known as "Good Wife, Wise Mother" that sought to transform Han Taiwanese girls into modern Japanese female citizens. Drawing on Japanese and Chinese newspapers, textbooks, oral interviews, and fiction, Fang Yu Hu illustrates how this seemingly progressive project advanced a particular Japanese vision of modernity, womanhood, and citizenship, to which the colonized Han Taiwanese people responded with varying degrees of collaboration, resistance, adaptation, and adoption. Hu also assesses the program's impact on Taiwan's class structure, male-female interactions, and political identity both during and after the end of Japanese occupation in 1945. Good Wife, Wise Mother expands the study of Taiwanese history by contributing important gendered and nonelite perspectives. It will be of interest to any historian concerned with questions of modernity, hybridity, and colonial nostalgia.