The Best Security in Politics Books 2025

1. Red Scare: Memories of the American Inquisition : An Oral History [Hardcover - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. Red Scare is a vivid oral history of a time when subscribers to the Nation, devotees of foreign films, and even those who supported Franklin Roosevelt's fourth term came under suspicion of being Communists or fellow travelers, a time that Griffin Fariello likens to the Inquisition. The author talks with sources such as retired FBI agent M. Wesley Swearingen, who ferreted out suspected Reds in Chicago for nearly two decades; Harvey Matusow, a Communist who worked as a paid government informant; and blacklisted filmmaker Edward Dmytryk, who went on to direct Raintree County and The Caine Mutiny after enduring a government campaign of harassment.

Red Scare: Memories of the American Inquisition : An Oral History, Used [Hardcover]

2. Peace Through Entrepreneurship: Investing in a Startup Culture for Security and Development [Hardcover - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. Joblessness is the root cause of the global unrest threatening American security. Fostering entrepreneurship is the remedy. The combined weight of American diplomacy and military power cannot end unrest and extremism in the Middle East and other troubled regions of the world, Steven Koltai argues. Koltai says an alternative approach would work: investing in entrepreneurship and reaping the benefits of the jobs created through entrepreneurial startups. From 9/11 and the Arab Spring to the self-proclaimed Islamic caliphate, instability and terror breed where young people cannot find jobs. Koltai marshals evidence to show that joblessness--not religious or cultural conflict--is the root cause of the unrest that vexes American foreign policy and threatens international security. Drawing on Koltai's stint as senior adviser for Entrepreneurship in Secretary Hillary Clinton's State Department, and his thirty-year career as a successful entrepreneur and business executive, Peace through Entrepreneurship argues for the significant elevation of entrepreneurship in the service of foreign policy; not rural microfinance or mercantile trading but the scalable stuff of Silicon Valley and Sam Walton, generating the vast majority of new jobs in economies large and small. Peace through Entrepreneurship offers a nonmilitary, long-term solution at a time of disillusionment with Washington's "big development" approach to unstable and underdeveloped parts of the world--and when the new normal is fear of terrorist attacks against Western targets, beheadings in Syria, and jihad. Extremism will not be resolved by a war on terror. The answer, Koltai shows, is stimulating entrepreneurial economic opportunities for the virtually limitless supply of desperate, unemployed young men and women leading lives of endless economic frustration.

Peace Through Entrepreneurship : Investing in a Startup Culture for Security and Development, Used [Hardcover]

3. Homeland Security for Policing [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. Unique in focus, Homeland Security for Policing presents a framework for understanding the role police play in today's era of Homeland Security. The only book of its kind, it examines the events that led up to this new policing era, the relationship between national, state and local agencies, and specific strategies, operations and tactics that can be used to prevent and protect against future threats. Special emphasis is placed on understanding 9-11, the entire framework of Homeland Security in the U.S. and the unique issues faced by local law enforcement. Provides a strategic focus that addresses state and local level responses to Homeland Security as well as responses at the federal level. Discusses the specific issues facing police with respect to Homeland Security and connects the Homeland Security and criminal justice fields. Discusses how and why policing has changed in the last decade. Presents a fuller understanding of how the concept of Homeland Security developed, what it means for the police, and where within the scope of a national Homeland Security framework the police fit. Discusses the activities of local police within the context of both state and national Homeland Security policies. Emphasizes the integral web of dependency and connected nature of these agencies. Discusses techniques for information gathering, risk and threat assessments, intelligence analysis, preparation for mass disasters (including Weapons of Mass Destruction), risk management, information sharing (both laterally and vertically), preemption of terrorism, and employment of an Incident Command System under the National Incident Management System. Helps identify the new roles, new responsibilities, and new tasks of the police in today's post 9-11 environment. Law enforcement professionals.

Homeland Security for Policing, Used [Paperback]

4. Omaha Blues: A Memory Loop [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. The profoundly moving family history of one of America's greatest newspapermen. As his father lies dying, Joseph Lelyveld finds himself in the basement of the Cleveland synagogue where Arthur Lelyveld was the celebrated rabbi. Nicknamed "the memory boy" by his parents, the fifty-nine-year-old son begins to revisit the portion of his father's life recorded in letters, newspaper clippings, and mementos stored in a dusty camp trunk. In an excursion into an unsettled and shakily recalled period of his boyhood, Lelyveld uses these artifacts, and the journalistic reporting techniques of his career as an author and editor, to investigate memories that have haunted him in adult life.. With equal measures of candor and tenderness, Lelyveld unravels the tangled story of his father and his mother, a Shakespeare scholar whose passion for independence led her to recoil from her roles as a clergyman's wife and, for a time, as a mother. This reacquired history of his sometimes troubled family becomes the framework for the author's story; in particular, his discovery in early adolescence of the way personal emotions cue political choices, when he is forced to choose sides between his father and his own closest adult friend, a colleague of his father's who is suddenly dismissed for concealing Communist ties. Lelyveld's effort to recapture his family history takes him on an unforeseen journey past disparate landmarks of the last century, including the Scottsboro trials, the Zionist movement, the Hollywood blacklist, McCarthyism, and Mississippi's "freedom summer" of 1964. His excursion becomes both a meditation on the selectivity and unreliability of memory and a testimony to the possibilities, even late in life, for understanding and healing. In Omaha Blues , as Lelyveld seeks out the truth of his life story, he evokes a remarkable moment in our national story with unforgettable poignancy.

Omaha Blues : A Memory Loop, Used [Paperback]

5. The Vulnerability of Empire (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. "Why do states sometimes adopt prudent policies in response to power shifts in the international system, while at other times they engage in imprudent and, ultimately, self-defeating behavior? . . . Based on case studies of the international behavior of Britain, France, Japan, Germany, and the United States, [this book] argues that the answer has much to do with 'perceptions of vulnerability.' . . . The Vulnerability of Empire is an important contribution to military security and foreign policy studies. Kupchan does an admirable job of integrating systemic, domestic, and cognitive variables to arrive at an explanation of his own."--American Political Science Review

The Vulnerability of Empire (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs), Used [Paperback]

6. @War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex [Hardcover - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. A surprising, page-turning account of how the wars of the future are already being fought today The United States military currently views cyberspace as the "fifth domain" of warfare (alongside land, air, sea, and space), and the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency, and the CIA all field teams of hackers who can, and do, launch computer virus strikes against enemy targets. In fact, as @WAR shows, U.S. hackers were crucial to our victory in Iraq. Shane Harris delves into the frontlines of America's new cyber war. As recent revelations have shown, government agencies are joining with tech giants like Google and Facebook to collect vast amounts of information. The military has also formed a new alliance with tech and finance companies to patrol cyberspace, and Harris offers a deeper glimpse into this partnership than we have ever seen before. Finally, Harris explains what the new cybersecurity regime means for all of us, who spend our daily lives bound to the Internet -- and are vulnerable to its dangers.

@War : The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex, Used [Hardcover]

7. Congress and the Politics of National Security [Hardcover - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. In an increasingly complex and unpredictable world, a growing number of observers and practitioners have called for a re-examination of our national security system. Central to any such reform effort is an evaluation of Congress. Is Congress adequately organized to deal with national security issues in an integrated and coordinated manner? How have developments in Congress over the past few decades, such as heightened partisanship, message politics, party-committee relationships and bicameral relations, affected topical security issues? This volume examines variation in the ways Congress has engaged federal agencies overseeing our nation's national security as well as various domestic political determinants of security policy.

Congress and the Politics of National Security, Used [Hardcover]

8. Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. The National Security Agency is the world's most powerful, most far-reaching espionage. Now with a new afterword describing the security lapses that preceded the attacks of September 11, 2001, Body of Secrets takes us to the inner sanctum of America's spy world. In the follow-up to his bestselling Puzzle Palace , James Banford reveals the NSA's hidden role in the most volatile world events of the past, and its desperate scramble to meet the frightening challenges of today and tomorrow. Here is a scrupulously documented account--much of which is based on unprecedented access to previously undisclosed documents--of the agency's tireless hunt for intelligence on enemies and allies alike. Body of secrets is a riveting analysis of this most clandestine of agencies, a major work of history and investigative journalism. A New York Times Notable Book

Body of Secrets : Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, Used [Paperback]

9. The balance of terror: Nuclear weapons and the illusion of security, 1945-1985 [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. The balance of terror: Nuclear weapons and the illusion of security, 1945-1985 by Edgar Bottome

The balance of terror: Nuclear weapons and the illusion of security, 1945-1985, Used [Paperback]

10. The Nuclear Tipping Point: Why States Reconsider Their Nuclear Choices [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. More than half a century after the advent of the nuclear age, is the world approaching a tipping point that will unleash an epidemic of nuclear proliferation? Today many of the building blocks of a nuclear arsenal--scientific and engineering expertise, precision machine tools, software, design information--are more readily available than ever before. The nuclear pretensions of so-called rogue states and terrorist organizations are much discussed. But how firm is the resolve of those countries that historically have chosen to forswear nuclear weapons? A combination of changes in the international environment could set off a domino effect, with countries scrambling to develop nuclear weapons so as not to be left behind--or to develop nuclear "hedge" capacities that would allow them to build nuclear arsenals relatively quickly, if necessary. Th e Nuclear Tipping Point e xamines the factors, both domestic and transnational, that shape nuclear policy. The authors, distinguished scholars and foreign policy practitioners with extensive government experience, develop a framework for understanding why certain countries may originally have decided to renounce nuclear weapons--and pinpoint some more recent country-specific factors that could give them cause to reconsider. Case studies of eight long-term stalwarts of the nonproliferation regime--Egypt, Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Syria, Turkey, and Taiwan--flesh out this framework and show how even these countries might be pushed over the edge of a nuclear tipping point. The authors offer prescriptions that would both prevent such countries from reconsidering their nuclear option and avert proliferation by others. The stakes are enormous and success is far from assured. To keep the tipping point beyond reach, the authors argue, the international community will have to act with unity, imagination, and strength, and Washington's leadership will be essential. Contributors include Leon Feurth, George Washington University; Ellen Laipson, Stimson Center; Thomas W. Lippman, Middle East Institute; Jenifer Mackby, Center for Strategic and International Studies; Derek J. Mitchell, Center for Strategic and International Studies; Jonathan D. Pollack, U.S. Naval War College; Walter B. Slocombe, Caplin and Drysdale; and Tsuyoshi Sunohara, Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Nuclear Tipping Point : Why States Reconsider Their Nuclear Choices, Used [Paperback]