Robert D. Kaplan

The best-selling author of Balkan Ghosts presents a timely and provocative response to The World Is Flat that draws on the insights of leading geographers and geopolitical thinkers to present a holistic interpretation of the next cycle of conflict throughout Eurasia that considers such topics as European debt, Chinese power and the role of Iran.

What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate

The Revenge of Geography

A history of the Balkan Peninsula explores the region's political, social, religious, and economic past in order to understand the nature of the recently rekindled, centuries-old blood feuds. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

A Journey Through History

Balkan Ghosts

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.

The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific

Asia's Cauldron

Debunking overly optimistic theories of an idyllic post-Cold War world, the author of Balkan Ghosts predicts that war, ethnic conflict, random violence, and fear will be hallmarks of the next century. Reprint. 30,000 first printing.

Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War

The Coming Anarchy

Takes the reader on a journey through the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus, describing the history, business, and people.

Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus

Eastward to Tartary

"A history of Romania traces the author's intellectual development throughout his extensive visits to the country, sharing his observations about its reflection of European politics, geography and key events while exploring the indelible role of Vladimir Putin."--NoveList.

Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-year Journey Through Romania and Beyond

In Europe's Shadow

The best-selling author of Imperial Grunts and Hog Pilots explores the international power shift to countries in the Indian Ocean region while explaining how and why America must focus its resources there in order to protect specific political and economic interests.

The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power

Monsoon

A veteran journalist and author of Balkan Ghosts offers a thought-provoking look at American imperialism from the perspective of the global war on terrorism and the role of America's elite military forces, in a study that reassesses the changing involvement of the United States in world affairs. Reprint. 40,000 first printing.

On the Ground with the American Military, from Mongolia to the Philippines to Iraq and Beyond

Imperial Grunts

انتقام الجغرافيا

The author relates his time spent with Afghanistan's mujahidin during their fight against Soviet invaders and provides insight into the circumstances that led to the rise of the Taliban.

With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Soldiers of God

In this insightful travelogue, Robert D. Kaplan, geopolitical expert and bestselling author of Balkan Ghosts and The Revenge of Geography, turns his perceptive eye to a region that for centuries has been a meeting point of cultures, trade, and ideas. He undertakes a journey around the Adriatic Sea, through Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, and Greece, to reveal that far more is happening in the region than most news stories let on. Often overlooked, the Adriatic is in fact at the center of the most significant challenges of our time, including the rise of populist politics, the refugee crisis, and battles over the control of energy resources. And it is once again becoming a global trading hub that will determine Europe’s relationship with the rest of the world as China and Russia compete for dominance in its ports. 

Kaplan explores how the region has changed over his three decades of observing it as a journalist. He finds that to understand both the historical and contemporary Adriatic is to gain a window on the future of Europe as a whole, and he unearths a stark truth: The era of populism is an epiphenomenon—a symptom of the age of nationalism coming to an end. Instead, the continent is returning to alignments of the early modern era as distinctions between East and West meet and break down within the Adriatic countries and ultimately throughout Europe. 

With a brilliant cross-pollination of history, literature, art, architecture, and current events, in Adriatic, Kaplan demonstrates that this unique region that exists at the intersection of civilizations holds revelatory truths for the future of global affairs.

A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age

Adriatic

Robert D. Kaplan lays bare the roots of American greatness by examining the geography from which our power springs - showing how westward expansion shaped our national character, and how it should shape our foreign policy

How Geography Shapes America's Role in the World

Earning the Rockies

The author describes his odyssey through some of the world's most troubled regions, where ancient cultural rivalries and traditional ethnic barriers threaten to reshape the world. Reprint. 30,000 first printing. Tour.

From Togo to Turkmenistan, From Iran to Cambodia--a Journey to the Frontiers of Anarchy

The Ends of the Earth

Robert D. Kaplan is one of our leading international journalists, someone who can explain the most complicated and volatile regions and show why they’re relevant to our world. In Surrender or Starve, Kaplan illuminates the fault lines in the Horn of Africa, which is emerging as a crucial region for America’s ongoing war on terrorism. Reporting from Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Eritrea, Kaplan examines the factors behind the famine that ravaged the region in the 1980s, exploring the ethnic, religious, and class conflicts that are crucial for understanding the region today. He offers a new foreword and afterword that show how the nations have developed since the famine, and why this region will only grow more important to the United States. Wielding his trademark ability to blend on-the-ground reporting and cogent analysis, Robert D. Kaplan introduces us to a fascinating part of the world, one that it would behoove all of us to know more about.

Travels in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea

Surrender Or Starve

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Revenge of Geography comes a sweeping yet intimate story of the most influential humanitarian you’ve never heard of—Bob Gersony, who spent four decades in crisis zones around the world. “One of the best accounts examining American humanitarian pursuits over the past fifty years . . . With still greater challenges on the horizon, we will need to find and empower more people like Bob Gersony—both idealistic and pragmatic—who can help make the world a more secure place.”—The Washington Post In his long career as an acclaimed journalist covering the “hot” moments of the Cold War and its aftermath, bestselling author Robert D. Kaplan often found himself crossing paths with Bob Gersony, a consultant for the U.S. State Department whose quiet dedication and consequential work made a deep impression on Kaplan. Gersony, a high school dropout later awarded a Bronze Star for his service in Vietnam, conducted on-the-ground research for the U.S. government in virtually every war and natural-disaster zone in the world. In Thailand, Central and South America, Sudan, Chad, Mozambique, Rwanda, Gaza, Bosnia, North Korea, Iraq, and beyond, Gersony never flinched from entering dangerous areas that diplomats could not reach, sometimes risking his own life. Gersony’s behind-the scenes fact-finding, which included interviews with hundreds of refugees and displaced persons from each war zone and natural-disaster area, often challenged the assumptions and received wisdom of the powers that be, on both the left and the right. In nearly every case, his advice and recommendations made American policy at once smarter and more humane—often dramatically so. In Gersony, Kaplan saw a powerful example of how American diplomacy should be conducted. In a work that exhibits Kaplan’s signature talent for combining travel and geography with sharp political analysis, The Good American tells Gersony’s powerful life story. Set during the State Department’s golden age, this is a story about the loneliness, sweat, and tears and the genuine courage that characterized Gersony’s work in far-flung places. It is also a celebration of ground-level reporting: a page-turning demonstration, by one of our finest geopolitical thinkers, of how getting an up-close, worm’s-eye view of crises and applying sound reason can elicit world-changing results.

The Epic Life of Bob Gersony, the U.S. Government's Greatest Humanitarian

The Good American

The author describes his journey westward from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in search of the large-scale political, economic, social, and cultural changes affecting America.

Travels Into America's Future

An Empire Wilderness

Describes an intimate off-season journey along the Mediterranean that covers the area's history, literature, and heritage, describing the mythologies and succeeding medieval civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome while revealing what the past says about today's world. Reprint. 17,500 first printing.

The Pleasures of History and Landscape in Tunisia, Sicily, Dalmatia, and the Peloponnese

Mediterranean Winter

Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China

Loom of Time

"A bracing assessment of U.S. foreign policy and world disorder over the past two decades, anchored by a major new Pentagon-commissioned essay about changing power dynamics among China, Eurasia, and America--from the renowned geopolitical analyst and bestselling author of The Revenge of Geography and The Coming Anarchy. In the late thirteenth century, Marco Polo began a decades-long trek from Venice to China. The strength of that Silk Road--the trade route between Europe and Asia--was a foundation of Kublai Khan's sprawling empire. Now, in the early twenty-first century, the Chinese regime has proposed a land-and-maritime Silk Road that duplicates exactly the route Marco Polo traveled. In the major lead essay, recently released by the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, Robert D. Kaplan lays out a blueprint of the world's changing power politics that recalls the late thirteenth century. As Europe fractures from changes in culture and migration, Eurasia coheres into a single conflict system. China is constructing a land bridge to Europe. Iran and India are trying to link the oil fields of Central Asia to the Indian Ocean. America's ability to influence the power balance in Eurasia is declining. This is Kaplan's first collection of essays since his classic The Coming Anarchy was published in 2000. Drawing on decades of firsthand experience as a foreign correspondent and military embed for The Atlantic, as well as encounters with preeminent realist thinkers, Kaplan outlines the timeless principles that should shape America's role in a turbulent world: a respect for the limits of Western-style democracy; a delineation between American interests and American values; an awareness of the psychological toll of warfare; a projection of power via a strong navy; and more. From Kaplan's immediate thoughts on President Trump ("On Foreign Policy, Donald Trump Is No Realist," 2016) to a frank examination of what will happen in the event of war with North Korea ("When North Korea Falls," 2006), The Return of Marco Polo's World is a vigorous and honest reckoning with the difficult choices the United States will face in the years ahead. "These essays constitute a truly pathbreaking, brilliant synthesis and analysis of geographic, political, technological, and economic trends with far-reaching consequences. The Return of Marco Polo's World is another work by Robert D. Kaplan that will be regarded as a classic."--General David Petraeus (U.S. Army, Ret.)"--

"Drawing on decades of first-hand experience as a foreign correspondent and military embed for The Atlantic, Robert D. Kaplan makes a powerful, clear-eyed case for what timeless principles should shape America's role in the world: a respect for the limits of Western-style democracy; a delineation between American interests versus American values; an awareness of the psychological toll of warfare; a projection of military power via a strong navy; and more"--

war, strategy, and American interests in the twenty-first century

The return of Marco Polo's world

Economische, politieke en militaire analyse van de landen rond de Indische Oceaan, die volgens de Amerikaanse journalist in de nabije toekomst de toonaangevende rol van de Verenigde Staten zullen overnemen.

Robert D. Kaplan

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