JENNIFER LIND

GOVERNMENT

FAVORITE BOOK TO TEACH:

The Tragedy of Great Power Politics by John Mearsheimer

MUST-READ BOOKS IN YOUR FIELD:

"E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century,"a study by Robert Putnam

FAVORITE PLEASURE READ:

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

CURRENTLY READING:

Country Driving, by Peter Hessler

I assign Mearsheimer's book to students in my "Introduction to International Politics" class. I love it because it is crisp, clear and powerful. One can make many criticisms of it and in class we certainly do, but it is a book to be reckoned with. Many times the students in my class are fresh out of high school and have the view that "if countries just talked about their problems, then they'd figure out how to get along." Mearsheimer sledgehammers this idea. To see its effect on the students is an amazing experience: They begin questioning, wrestling, learning. Some students leave the class committed Mearsheimerites, with a dog-eared copy of his book next to their beds. Others reject his pessimistic view. However, thanks to the clarity that this book imposes, all students leave the class armed with far more intelligent arguments about conflict and cooperation in international politics.

I read Hessler's writing in The New Yorker and am always entranced by it. This book details the author's experience with a road trip around China and tells of his life in a small rural village. The book, like Hessler's articles, shows China's recent evolution from a poor backward society into a modern developed country. It puts names and faces and anecdotes to all of those statistics that we read about. I have students read his work in my East Asian international relations class.