Join Caelyn Cobb on an Exploration of Our ISA 2020 Books for Courses

Aloha from Not-Hawaii, friends! Today in our virtual International Studies Association (ISA) booth, I want to share some of our international politics books that would be great choices for courses. Obviously, I think all of our global politics books have course potential, but I’ll highlight just a few here.

Survive and Resist: The Definitive Guide to Dystopian Politics, by Amy L. Atchison and Shauna L. Shames, is a unique resource for introductory political science and comparative politics courses. Atchison and Shames explain key concepts like democracy, political economy, civil resistance, and good governance using examples from popular dystopian literature, television, and films. Fictional dystopias, as it turns out, are great models of the mechanisms of governing, how governments can fail, and how the people can rebuild for the better in the wake of government failure. They also use real-world examples of these topics, in places ranging from North Korea to Liberia to the United States, to show how the concepts examined in their popular culture examples extend to real-life politics. This book was specifically designed for course use and tested in the authors’ own classrooms as it was developed, and it can serve as a key text for a fun and engaging undergraduate introductory class. We even have sample syllabi on our website if you are looking for inspiration!

Another great political science course resource is the forthcoming book Stories from the Field: A Guide to Navigating Fieldwork in Political Science, edited by Peter Krause and Ora Szekely. I made up some spectacular postcards to spread the word about this book (out June 30) at ISA, but they are currently in quarantine in our Manhattan office. This book is something special: over forty short essays by political scientists from across the spectrum of specializations discussing the lessons they learned doing field research. It’s the perfect text to assign alongside methodology guides so students can get a robust view of the practical realities of fieldwork. It’s available for pre-order, so make sure to reserve yours now. You can also view the full table of contents on the book page on our website.

If you teach U.S. foreign policy, we have a few texts out that will be perfect fits for your classroom. First, the second edition of United States Special Operations Forces, by David Tucker and Christopher J. Lamb, published this fall. Second, our concise guide to the history of U.S. foreign relations, Warren J. Cohen’s A Nation Like All Others, is new this month in paperback. And third, also by Warren Cohen, the sixth edition of America’s Response to China published in September is a perfect text for a class focusing on the past and present of Sino-American relations, now updated through the Obama and Trump administrations.

Lastly, the new paperbacks! With no ISA booth to show off the latest round, you’ll have to make do with our virtual new-in-paperback table. In no particular order, we have these books newly ready and waiting to be assigned in your class: