The Best of Books 2024 - Foreign Affairs

The Best of Books 2024

Foreign Affairs’ Top Picks of the Year

Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy

 

In a revelatory book, Farrell and Newman describe how the United States has turned its control over information networks into a hidden tool of economic domination—and warn of the risks of Washington’s weaponization of data power for ordinary people, as well as for the global financial system.

 

Reviewed by Paul Krugman

To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power

 

In a major reconsideration of Cold War history, Radchenko examines the Soviet Union’s competing ambitions for revolution, security, and legitimacy—and how Soviet leadership, blinded by its own hubris and aggression, set the stage for the downfall of the USSR.

 

Reviewed by John Lewis Gaddis

The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon

 

Shatz discusses the life of the anticolonial revolutionary Frantz Fanon, showing how Fanon’s ideas about race relations, colonialism, and the purpose of violence emerged from the political ferment of his time.

 

Reviewed by Nicolas van de Walle