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Great Decisions 2023 Discussion Date: TUESDAY, MARCH 28
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Welcome to the Great Decisions 2023 discussion at the Jacksonville Public Library! You are receiving this newsletter because you have shown an interest in the past about this discussion series or you have requested information about library programming. The program will be held on selected dates from 7 – 8:30 p.m. at various locations.
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Upcoming Discussions: Click on the titles to register
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Energy Geopolitics - TBA Economic Warfare - TBA Iran at a Crossroads - TBA
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In Wartime: Stories from Ukraine
by Tim Judah
"Drawing on interviews with Russian agents, weary historians, desperate civil servants and retirees from the villages that dot the country's famous farmland, one of the best journalists of his generation presents a definitive, first-hand account from the front lines of the conflict in Ukraine, creating a sweeping portrait of a disintegrating nation."
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Putin
by Philip Short
"Vladimir Putin is the world's most dangerous man. Alone among world leaders, he has the power to reduce the United States and Europe to ashes in a nuclear firestorm and has threatened to do so. He invades his neighbors, most recently Ukraine, meddles in elections, and orders assassinations inside and outside Russia. His regime is autocratic and deeply corrupt. But that is only half the story."
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The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine
by Serhii Plokhy
"Presents a history of Ukraine, discussing how the country's position as a gateway between the East and the West have led to numerous conflicts in the past and its constant struggle to defend against rival powers and maintain its independence."
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The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War
by Nicholas Mulder
"Economic sanctions dominate the landscape of world politics today. First developed in the early twentieth century as a way to use the flows of globalization to defend liberal internationalism, their continuing appeal is that they function as an alternative to war. This view, however, ignores the dark paradox at their core: designed to prevent war, economic sanctions are modeled on devastating techniques of warfare.
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The Third Revolution: XI Jinping and the New Chinese State
by Elizabeth C. Economy
"The Third Revolution argues that Xi Jinping’s dual-reform trajectories—a more authoritarian system at home and a more ambitious foreign policy abroad—provide Beijing with new levers of influence that the United States must learn to exploit to protect its own interests."
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Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific
by Robert D. Kaplan
"A well-respected travel writer and foreign policy expert, explaining Chinese dominance over the South China Sea, reveals the conflicts brewing between the nations surrounding the body of water that multiple countries claim and what they could mean for the United States."
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Engaging China: Fifty Years of Sino-American Relations
by Anne F. Thurston (editor)
"The importance of the relationship between the United States and the People's Republic of China has only grown since Richard Nixon's epochal visit in 1972. By the early twenty-first century, when the rise of China had become an inescapable fact, most American policy makers and experts saw bilateral ties with China as the most consequential foreign-relations priority for the United States. In recent years, even before the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S.-China relationship has rapidly deteriorated-and the whole world has felt the consequences.
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The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations
by Daniel Yergin
"The global energy expert and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Shattered Peace shares revelatory insights into how energy revolutions, climate battles and geopolitics are mapping a near future already complicated by the coronavirus pandemic and related economic fallout."
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Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power
by Steve Coll
"An investigation into the influential and fiercely private corporation traces the period between the Exxon Valdez accident and the Deepwater Horizion spill to profile chief executives Lee Raymond and Rex Tillerson as well as the company's role in violent international incidents."
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Oil, the State, and War: The Foreign Policies of Petrostates
by Emma Ashford
"Petrostates play an outsize role in world affairs. The largest producers of oil and natural gas are wealthy states that translate that wealth into influence. They start more wars and support violent proxies abroad. Oil-rich states prop up the global arms trade, but they also use their wealth for diplomatic and aid purposes. Many assume that petrostates can use their contribution to global oil supply as a weapon, but this is more myth than reality."
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Three Famines: Starvation and Politics
by Thomas Keneally
"Discusses the Gorta Mor in 1840s Ireland, the famine in British-controlled Bengal in 1943, and the string of famines in Ethiopia in the late 20th century, and explores the concept that while famine can be caused by crop failures and weather conditions, famines are worsened by man-made choices such as politics and social and religious ideology."
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Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
by Barbara Demick
"Follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years, a chaotic period that saw the rise to power of Kim Jong Il and the devastation of a famine that killed one-fifth of the population, illustrating what it means to live under the most repressive totalitarian regime today."
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Politics in Latin America:
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Forgotten Continent: A History of the New Latin America
by Michael Reid
"Ten years after its first publication, Michael Reid's best-selling survey of the state of contemporary Latin America has been wholly updated to reflect the new realities of the "Forgotten Continent." The former Americas editor for the Economist, Reid suggests that much of Central and South America, though less poor, less unequal, and better educated than before, faces harder economic times now that the commodities boom of the 2000s is over."
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Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm
by Yarimar Bonilla and Marisol LeBrón
"Two years after Hurricane Maria hit, Puerto Ricans are still reeling from its effects and aftereffects. The concept of "aftershocks" is used in the context of earthquakes to describe the jolts felt after the initial quake, but no disaster is a singular event. Aftershocks of Disaster examines the lasting effects of hurricane Maria, not just the effects of the wind or the rain, but delving into what followed: state failure, social abandonment, capitalization on human misery, and the collective trauma produced by the botched response."
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