WACHH BoOK CLUB

The Book Club is the newest addition to the World Affairs Council of Hilton Head (WACHH) program offerings. The Book Club presents an opportunity for us all to learn more broadly and deeply about both world affairs and domestic politics, to engage in stimulating discussions, and to make new friendships.

The Book Club is free and open to WACHH members and the public, but advance registration is required. Registration for each book club discussion will open one month in advance and is limited to 30 participants.

The Book Club meets the second Thursday of each month from 4:30 to 6:00 pm at The Island Rec Center Board Room, 20 Wilborn Rd, Hilton Head Island (next to the High school).

January 8, 2026

Breaking the Engagement: How China Won & Lost America  by David Shambaugh 

For over five decades following the 1972 rapprochement between the United States and China, the two countries seemed to be steadily building a sound relationship, even accounting for periodic setbacks like the Tiananmen Square massacre. The last decade, though, has seen a sharp increase in tensions and a complete reorientation of American policies toward China―from "engagement" to "competition."

What happened? In Breaking the Engagement: How China Won & Lost America, esteemed scholar David Shambaugh examines the evolution, expansion, and disintegration of the American engagement strategy towards China.

Shambaugh attributes the recent sharp deterioration of relations to a combination of China's actions and American expectations. Xi Jinping's increasingly assertive foreign policy and domestic repression has directly challenged American interests. More deeply, he argues that the real underlying cause is America's longstanding paternalistic approach to transform China into a liberal state and society which conforms with the US-led global liberal order. When China has generally evolved in this direction― politically, economically, socially, intellectually, and internationally―it corresponds with American aspirations and the two could cooperate. But when Beijing pushes back against this transformative strategy―which Beijing sees as subversion―Americans become disillusioned and U.S. policymakers see China as a malign regime, which must be countered.

February 12, 2026

Enduring Hostility: The Making of America's Iran Policy  by Dalia Dassa Kaye  

A timely and rigorous analysis of a half-century of American policymakers' shifting perceptions of Iran, and how they have driven US-Iran relations. US–Iran hostility has endured for longer than the Cold War. Momentous geopolitical shifts, changing leaderships, and evolving domestic priorities have not fundamentally altered this antagonistic relationship. Standard explanations pin the blame for this enduring hostility on Iran and its leaders' revolutionary ideology and policies at odds with the United States and the West. While Iran bears significant blame for a deeply adversarial relationship—the country often engages in dangerous and repressive activities—this book demonstrates that "it's them, not us" accounts cannot alone explain America's posture toward this complicated but critically important country. Drawing on original interviews with former government officials, oral histories, memoirs, congressional hearings, archival material, and the author's own participation in dozens of Iran-related track two meetings, Dalia Dassa Kaye deftly explores how America's Iran policy is made, the people who make it, and the underlying ideas and perceptions that inform it. Dassa Kaye looks back at US policy toward Iran over the past four decades to help us look ahead, offering wider lessons for understanding American foreign policymaking and providing critical insights at a pivotal time of heightened military tensions in and around the Middle East

March 12, 2026

Abundance  by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson 

To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough.

Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear’s villains. Rather, one generation’s solutions have become the next gener­ation’s problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the problems of the 1970s often prevent urban-density and green-energy projects that would help solve the problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished.

Progress requires facing up to the institutions in life that are not working as they need to. It means, for liberals, recognizing when the government is failing. It means, for conservatives, recognizing when the government is needed. In a book exploring how we can move from a liberalism that not only protects and pre­serves but also builds

, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and propose a path toward a politics of abundance. At a time when movements of scarcity are gaining power in country after country, this is an answer that meets the challenges of the moment while grappling honestly with the fury so many rightfully feel.

April 9, 2026

America in the Arctic: Foreign Policy and Competition in the Melting North  by Mary Thompson-Jones 

As climate change accelerates, the Arctic has become a frontline of global competition. Melting ice, rising temperatures, and swelling seas have made remote regions at once newly accessible and rife with new dangers. Vladimir Putin’s Russia has embarked on a substantial military buildup in the Arctic, and China has also turned its attention northward. The United States, however, has only recently begun to reestablish its Arctic presence after many years of waning influence.

America in the Arctic offers a timely and compelling case for why the United States must deepen its commitment to a region threatened by climate change and geopolitical rivalry. Mary Thompson-Jones surveys past and present U.S. relations with the Arctic lands: Canada, Iceland, Greenland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Russia. She traces the history of the U.S. presence in the far north from the purchase of Alaska through the Cold War, arguing that lessons from the past should inform America’s relationships with its Arctic neighbors today. At its best, U.S. Arctic policy balanced security interests with residents’ needs and international cooperation on environmental and regional issues. In recent years, many policymakers scrambling to reassert U.S. leadership have framed their goals solely in security terms. Thompson-Jones argues that climate change now poses the greatest challenge, calling for a new approach that is inclusive of all the Arctic’s inhabitants. Bringing together national security expertise and historical insight, this book charts a course for American Arctic policy in a warming world.

May 14, 2026

The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women in the CIA  by Liza Mundy 

Created in the aftermath of World War II, the Central Intelligence Agency relied on women even as it attempted to channel their talents and keep them down. Women sent cables, made dead drops, and maintained the agency’s secrets. Despite discrimination—even because of it—women who started as clerks, secretaries, or unpaid spouses rose to become some of the CIA’s shrewdest operatives.

They were unlikely spies—and that’s exactly what made them perfect for the role. Because women were seen as unimportant, pioneering female intelligence officers moved unnoticed around Bonn, Geneva, and Moscow, stealing secrets from under the noses of their KGB adversaries. Back at headquarters, women built the CIA’s critical archives—first by hand, then by computer. And they noticed things that the men at the top didn’t see. As the CIA faced an identity crisis after the Cold War, it was a close-knit network of female analysts who spotted the rising threat of al-Qaeda—though their warnings were repeatedly brushed aside.

After the 9/11 attacks, more women joined the agency as a new job, targeter, came to prominence. They showed that data analysis would be crucial to the post-9/11 national security landscape—an effort that culminated spectacularly in the CIA’s successful effort to track down bin Laden in his Pakistani compound.

Propelled by the same meticulous reporting and vivid storytelling that infused Code Girls, The Sisterhood offers a riveting new perspective on history, revealing how women at the CIA ushered in the modern intelligence age, and how their silencing made the world more dangerous

June 11, 2026

Russia's World Order: How Civilizationism Explains the Conflict with the West  by Paul Robinson 

Russia's World Order explores the ideas underlying the undeclared New Cold War between Russia and the West. The first Cold War was a struggle between capitalism and communism; most Western politicians and policymakers imagine the new one to be a struggle between democracy and autocracy. Russia's World Order explains that in Russian eyes, the conflict is about something very different: it is a fight between two incompatible visions of where history is leading.

Russia's World Order describes the civilizational theory that has come to dominate Russian official discourse, and that has come to dominate Russian official discourse and that is being used by the Russian state to justify its clashes with the West. Whereas the West promotes a vision of history that drives all nations toward convergence on a single social, political, and economic model (that of modern Western liberalism), Russia's political leaders increasingly portray the world as consisting of numerous distinct civilizations, each diverging toward its own unique destination. The Russian state portrays itself as defending the right of all civilizations to chart their own independent path of development and is having some success in using this logic to win allies around the world. 

Paul Robinson recounts how ideas of inevitable convergence once dominated Russian thought as well but were gradually pushed out by civilizational theories. He outlines where these theories came from, what they propose, and how they became popular. Russia's World Order thereby reveals the true nature of today's New Cold War and the challenge that Russian civilizationism poses to the West.

July 9, 2026

How Economic Explains: A Short History Humanity  by Andrew Leigh 

 In How Economics Explains the World, Harvard-trained economist Andrew Leigh presents a new way to understand the human story. From the dawn of agriculture to AI, here is story of how ingenuity, greed, and desire for betterment have, to an astonishing degree, determined our past, present, and future. 

This small book indeed tells a big story. It is the story of capitalism – of how our market system developed. It is the story of the discipline of economics, and some of the key figures who formed it. And it is the story of how economic forces have shaped world history. Why didn’t Africa colonize Europe instead of the other way around? What happened when countries erected trade and immigration barriers in the 1930s? Why did the Allies win World War II? Why did inequality in many advanced countries fall during the 1950s and 1960s? How did property rights drive China’s growth surge in the 1980s? How does climate change threaten our future prosperity? You’ll find answers to these questions and more in How Economics Explains the World.

Past Book Club Selections

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