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 35 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).

August 8, 2024

The Future of Geography: How the Competition in Space Will Change Our World by Tim Marshall

From the New York Times bestselling author of Prisoners of Geography and leading geopolitics expert comes an “insightful, hopeful, and endlessly fascinating” (Daily Express) book on today’s space race—including the increasingly tense power struggle between the US, China, and Russia and what it means for all of us here on Earth.

Spy satellites orbiting the moon. Space metals worth more than most countries’ GDP. People on Mars within the next ten years. This isn’t science fiction—it’s reality.

Humans are venturing up and out, and we’re taking our competitive spirit with us. Soon, what happens in space will shape human history as much the mountains, rivers, and seas have impacted civilizations around the world. It’s no coincidence that Russia, China, and the USA are leading the way. The next fifty years will change the face of global politics and the world order as we know it.

In this must-read work, bestselling author Tim Marshall navigates the new astropolitical reality to show how we got here and where we’re heading. Extensively researched, “thought-provoking” (Popular Science), and drawing on the latest information from intelligence, government, and civilian institutions, this book provides a detailed, clear account of the new space race, the power rivalries, and how technology, economics, and war have a ripple effect on everyone across the globe. Written with all the insight and wit that have made Marshall one of the world’s most popular and trusted writer on geopolitics, The Future of Geography is an essential read about global power, politics, and the future of humanity.

Register Here

September 12, 2024

Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller

 'Fascinating … A historian by training, Miller walks the reader through decades of semiconductor history – a subject that comes to life thanks to [his] use of colorful anecdotes' Forbes 

Power in the modern world - military, economic, geopolitical - is built on a foundation of computer chips. America has maintained its lead as a superpower because it has dominated advances in computer chips and all the technology that chips have enabled. (Virtually everything runs on chips: cars, phones, the stock market, even the electric grid.) Now that edge is in danger of slipping, undermined by the naïve assumption that globalizing the chip industry and letting players in Taiwan, Korea and Europe take over manufacturing serves America's interests. Currently, as Chip War reveals, China, which spends more on chips than any other product, is pouring billions into a chip-building Manhattan Project to catch up to the US. 

In Chip War economic historian Chris Miller recounts the fascinating sequence of events that led to the United States perfecting chip design, and how faster chips helped defeat the Soviet Union (by rendering the Russians’ arsenal of precision-guided weapons obsolete). The battle to control this industry will shape our future. China spends more money importing chips than buying oil, and they are China's greatest external vulnerability as they are fundamentally reliant on foreign chips. But with 37 per cent of the global supply of chips being made in Taiwan, within easy range of Chinese missiles, the West's fear is that a solution may be close at hand. 

Dr. Miller is associate professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank in Washington, D.C.

Register Here

October 10, 2024

New Cold Wars: China's Rise Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West by David Sanger

 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The fast-paced inside story of America’s plunge into a volatile rivalry with the other two great nuclear powers—Xi Jinping’s China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author of The Perfect Weapon
 
“[A] cogent, revealing account of how a generation of American officials have grappled with dangerous developments in the post-Cold War era . . . vividly captures Washington.”—The New York Times (Editors’ Choice)

New Cold Wars—the latest from the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author of The Perfect Weapon David E. Sanger—is a fast-paced account of America’s plunge into simultaneous confrontations with two very different adversaries. For years, the United States was confident that the newly democratic Russia and increasingly wealthy China could be lured into a Western-led order that promised prosperity and relative peace—so long as they agreed to Washington’s terms. By the time America emerged from the age of terrorism, it was clear that this had been a fantasy.

Now the three powers are engaged in a high-stakes struggle for military, economic, political, and technological supremacy, with nations around the world pressured to take sides. Yet all three are discovering that they are maneuvering for influence in a far more turbulent world than they imagined.

Based on a remarkable array of interviews with top officials from five presidential administrations, U.S. intelligence agencies, foreign governments, and tech companies, Sanger unfolds a riveting narrative spun around the era’s critical questions: Will the mistakes Putin made in his invasion of Ukraine prove his undoing and will he reach for his nuclear arsenal—or will the West’s famously short attention span signal Kyiv’s doom? Will Xi invade Taiwan? Will both men deepen their partnership to undercut America’s dominance? And can a politically dysfunctional America still lead the world?

Taking readers from the battlefields of Ukraine—where trench warfare and cyberwarfare are interwoven—to the Taiwan headquarters where the world’s most advanced computer chips are produced and on to tense debates in the White House Situation Room, New Cold Wars is a remarkable first-draft history chronicling America’s return to superpower conflict, the choices that lie ahead, and what is at stake for the United States and the world.

David Sanger the White House and National Security Correspondent for The New York Times, reporting on President Biden and his administration, with a particular focus on foreign policy and its intersection with technology, politics and superpower conflict.

Register Here

November 14, 2024

Erdogan's War: A Strongman's Struggle at Home and in Syria by Gonul Tol

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey's pugnacious president, is now the country's longest-serving leader. On his way to the top, he has fought many wars. This book tells the story of those battles against domestic enemies through the lens of the Syrian conflict, which has become part and parcel of Erdoğan's fight to remain in power.

Turkey expert Gönül Tol traces Erdoğan's ideological evolution from a conservative democrat to an Islamist and a Turkish nationalist, and explores how this progression has come to shape his Syria policy, changing the course of the war. She paints a vivid picture of the president's constantly shifting strategy to consolidate his rule, showing that these shifts have transformed Turkey's role in post-uprising Syria from an advocate of democracy, to a power fanning the flames of civil war, to an occupier.

From the first days of Erdoğan's rule through the failed coup against him, via the Kurdish peace process, the Arab uprisings and the refugee crisis, this compelling, authoritative book tells the story of one man's quest to remain in power--tying together the fates of two countries, and changing them both forever.

Gönül Tol is the founding director of the Middle East Institute's Turkey program, and a Frontier Europe Initiative senior fellow. A frequent media commentator, she teaches and writes extensively on Turkey-US relations, Turkish politics and foreign policy, the Kurdish issue, and Islamism in Western Europe and the Middle East.

Register Here

Book Club - Erdogan's War: A Strongman's Struggle at Home and in Syria by Gonul Tol

December 12, 2024

The End of the World is Just the Begining: Mapping the Collapse by Peter Zeihan

The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization by Peter Zeihan

 

For generations, everything has been getting faster, better, and cheaper. Finally, we reached the point that almost anything you could ever want could be sent to your home within days - even hours - of when you decided you wanted it.  America made that happen, but now America has lost interest in keeping it going.

Globe-spanning supply chains are only possible with the protection of the U.S. Navy. The American dollar underpins internationalized energy and financial markets. Complex, innovative industries were created to satisfy American consumers. American security policy forced warring nations to lay down their arms. Billions of people have been fed and educated as the American-led trade system spread across the globe.
All of this was artificial. All this was temporary. All this is ending.
In The End of the World is Just the Beginning, author and geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan maps out the next world: a world where countries or regions will have no choice but to make their own goods, grow their own food, secure their own energy, fight their own battles, and do it all with populations that are both shrinking and aging.

The list of countries that make it all work is smaller than you think. Which means everything about our interconnected world - from how we manufacture products, to how we grow food, to how we keep the lights on, to how we shuttle stuff about, to how we pay for it all - is about to change.
In customary Zeihan fashion, rather than yelling fire in the geoeconomic theatre, he narrates the accumulation of matchsticks, gasoline, and dynamite in the hands of the oblivious audience, suggesting we might want to call the fire department.

A world ending. A world beginning. Zeihan brings readers along for an illuminating (and a bit terrifying) ride packed with foresight, wit, and his trademark irreverence.

Peter is a New York Times bestselling author whose first three books — The Accidental Superpower, The Absent Superpower and Disunited Nations — have been recommended by Mitt Romney, Fareed Zakaria and Ian Bremmer. Peter is also a highly sought after public speaker. With a keen eye toward what will drive tomorrow’s headlines, his irreverent approach transforms topics that are normally dense and heavy into accessible, relevant takeaways for audiences of all types.

Register here
Book Club - The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization by Peter Zeihan

Past Book Club Selections

Privacy Notice  |  Donate  |  Become a Member |  Facebook  |  YouTube