Overview

In the twenty-five years after 1989, the world enjoyed the deepest peace in history. In The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth, the eminent foreign policy scholar Michael Mandelbaum examines that remarkable quarter century, describing how and why the peace was established and then fell apart. To be sure, wars took place in this era, but less frequently and on a far smaller scale than in previous periods. Mandelbaum argues that the widespread peace ended because three major countries--Vladimir Putin's Russia in Europe, Xi Jinping's China in East Asia, and the Shia clerics' Iran in the Middle East--put an end to it with aggressive nationalist policies aimed at overturning the prevailing political arrangements in their respective regions. The three had a common motive: their need to survive in a democratic age with their countries' prospects for economic growth uncertain. Mandelbaum further argues that the key to the return of peace lies in the advent of genuine democracy, including free elections and the protection of religious, economic, and political liberty. Yet, since recent history has shown that democracy cannot be imposed from the outside, The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth has a dual message: while the world has a formula for peace, there is no way to ensure that all countries will embrace it.

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Michael Mandelbaum is the Christian A. Herter Professor Emeritus of American Foreign Policy at The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the author of sixteen books, including Mission Failure, The Ideas That Conquered the World, The Meaning of Sports, The Frugal Superpower, and That Used to Be Us (with Thomas L. Friedman). David Stifel was born and raised in Denver, Colorado. Bitten early by the acting bug, he studied his craft at the Yale School of Drama. After graduation, he found himself in the usual array of interesting day jobs such as casino porter at Lake Tahoe, ESL teacher in Iran, and Egypt, and video game programmer in the Atari/Intellivision era. Concurrently he worked in films and TV shows for such directors as Steven Spielberg (Minority Report), Danny Boyle (A Life Less Ordinary), and Joel Schumacher (The Number 23). David entered the audiobook field in 2011, when he launched a long-term podcast of serializations of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Today he is a multi-award-winning narrator with more than 125 audiobooks to his credit. His growing catalog of audiobooks is strong on thrillers, horror, sci-fi, and mysteries. David's rich baritone voice also lends itself very well to nonfiction memoirs and history-popular and academic. His classical acting training makes him very strong with heightened literary language. Pegged as a character actor from youth, his facility with numerous characters is frequently praised by reviewers and listeners.

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