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Get an inside look at Austin Merkel’s essay “Outgrowing Empire: The Commercial Origins of American National Identity” in the Alexander Hamilton Society’s publication “1776: The Beginnings of American Exceptionalism Abroad.”

Get an inside look at Samuel Byers’s essay “Maritime America: Sea Power, the Early Republic, and America’s Lost Maritime Strategic Tradition” in the Alexander Hamilton Society’s publication “1776: The Beginnings of American Exceptionalism Abroad.”

Get an inside look at Eamonn Bellin’s essay “Wary Peace: Anglo-American Relations Between 1783-1808” in the Alexander Hamilton Society’s publication “1776: The Beginnings of American Exceptionalism Abroad.”

Get an inside look at Rachel Hoff’s essay “America’s First: The Statesmanship and Statecraft of President George Washington” in the Alexander Hamilton Society’s publication “1776: The Beginnings of American Exceptionalism Abroad.”

Discover more about Nathan Hitchen’s essay “The Religious Republic: America’s Statecraft Under God” in the Alexander Hamilton Society’s publication “1776: The Beginnings of American Exceptionalism Abroad.”

America’s Founding Fathers feared that a standing army would be a permanent political danger, yet the U.S. military has in the 250 years since become a bulwark of democracy. Kori Schake explains why in this compelling history of civil-military relations from independence to the challenges of the present.The book begins with General Washington’s vital foundational example of subordination to elected leaders during the Revolutionary War. Schake recounts numerous instances in the following century when charismatic military leaders tried to challenge political leaders and explains the emergence of restrictions on uses of the military for domestic law enforcement. She explores the crucial struggle between President Andrew Johnson and Congress after Lincoln’s assassination, when Ulysses Grant had to choose whether to obey the Commander-in-Chief or the law – and chose to obey the law. And she shows how the professionalization of the military in the twentieth century inculcated norms of civilian control. The U.S. military is historically anomalous for maintaining its strength and popularity while never becoming a threat to democracy. Schake concludes by asking if its admirable record can be sustained when the public is pulling the military into the political divisions of our time.

In September 2022, twenty-two-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Jina Amini is killed by Iran’s morality police in Tehran for allegedly wearing her hijab too loosely. Outrage triggers nationwide protests. Women rip off their headscarves, setting them afire. Others cut their hair in open defiance. Key industries are brought to a standstill, and once-revered banners of the country’s Supreme Leader are incinerated. It’s the greatest challenge to the Islamic Republic of Iran in its forty-six-year history-not coming from a foreign adversary but from their own freedom-seeking women. Women and girls, perhaps for the first time in the history of the modern Middle East, take center stage in a nationwide uprising, clamoring for a freer Iran and chanting the now-viral battle cry of: “Woman, Life, Freedom.” Award-winning British-Iranian journalist Jonathan Harounoff, now serving as Israel’s international spokesperson to the United Nations, demystifies the context leading up to these historic protests inside Iran and abroad and examines the potential future ramifications. With much of the global spotlight focused on the Islamic Republic’s dangerous foreign policy agenda, Unveiled: Inside Iran’s #WomanLifeFreedom Revolt pays tribute to the people of Iran who have paid the ultimate price for freedom.

In this collection of 40 columns written for RealClearPolitics between 2014 and 2024, Peter Berkowitz explains Israel by reporting events, examining ideas, and placing both in their larger geopolitical context. The senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution draws on the great Israeli mosaic of people, opinions, and aspirations to illuminate the domestic politics, diplomatic and national security imperatives, and multivalent spirit of the Middle East’s only rights-protecting democracy. The carefully curated collection of essays in “Explaining Israel” demonstrates that to understand the Jewish state, it is necessary to appreciate the nation’s accomplishments and setbacks, the sources of its political cohesiveness and the forces dividing it, and the splendid opportunities and grave threats that it confronts. The essays commence with Israel in 2014 at the height of its prosperity and self-confidence. They explore intensifying schisms inside the country and gathering dangers on its borders and throughout the region. And they culminate in penetrating analyses of the two crises that struck Israel in 2023. In January, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s sweeping judicial-reform proposals set off bitter controversy and months of massive protests. Then on October 7, Iran-backed Hamas jihadists invaded Israel, massacred some 1,200 people and kidnapped around 250, enmeshing Israel in a seven-front war against Iran and its regional proxies. Berkowitz’s essays clarify the breathtaking achievements, the heartbreak, and the remarkable resilience of a nation struggling valiantly to be Jewish, free, and democratic in a dangerous region crucial to America’s interests.

How will the United States and China evolve militarily in the years ahead? Many experts believe the answer to this question is largely unknowable. But Zack Cooper argues that the American and Chinese militaries are following a well-trodden path. For centuries, the world’s most powerful militaries have adhered to a remarkably consistent pattern of behavior, determined largely by their leaders’ perceptions of relative power shifts. By uncovering these trends, this book places the evolving military competition between the United States and China in historical context. Drawing on a decade of research and on his experience at the White House and the Pentagon, Cooper outlines a novel explanation for how militaries change as they rise and decline. “Tides of Fortune” examines the paths of six great powers of the twentieth century, tracking how national leaders adjusted their defense objectives, strategies, and investments in response to perceived shifts in relative power. All these militaries followed a common pattern, and their experiences shed new light on both China’s recent military modernization and America’s potential responses.