"Every author thinks they're going to hit the motherlode. And who are we to begrudge them the effort?"

What? Academics envious? No that can't be.

The reason policy makers don't pay much attention to IR literature is that most IR literature is really ridiculous. It's not that it works on paper but fails in the real world. It's that it doesn't even work on paper.

Parsimony. LOL.

There is a great Kinsley column about how authors of books should really be writing magazine articles, because they can make their point without spending a year or more writing, and no one's going to read the book anyway.

I think these types of books can be great, they are really accessible to people without a background in I.R.

Personally, I started out on books like these and eventually worked my ways up to hard hitting serious I.R. publications.

Though I.R. scholars can safely disregard most of the theories in these books as rehashes, they are invaluable for bringing new people into the discussion.

Nexon and I?

These are books are great when you're tenured. Money, baby. But for the untenured, no matter how sensible or well-intentioned or well-written or informative or useful for policymakers or well-received, the navel-gazers and IR snobs will sniff down their noses and dismiss it as "not serious."

More's the pity.

Nick Borst hit the nail on the head, atleast for me.

When I started to get interested in world events in middle/high school I didn't run out to the library and pick up a copy of American Political Science Review (even if I had I wouldn't of understood a word of it). Instead I went to Barnes and Noble and picked up books just like The Case for Goliath. In my case it was Thomas Friedman's Lexus and the Olive Tree.

These books led me to entering college as a political science student and the POL survey classes introduced me academic literature. The end result was an acceptance into a Ph.D program (which I start in the fall).

Journalists/writers like Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum create the next generation of political science academics.

I haven't read Mandelbaum's latest, but I did start his last book. Yes, "start." Mandelbaum is definitely writing for the young reader about whom Chris Albon so sloppily writes. (Crankygrammarian: I'd like to join the club.)

I'll never start another Mandelbaum book. While I agree with Nick Borst's point, there are so many better places to start -- in general, I'd recommend historians over political scientists to any middle- or high-school student.

And, "alkali" is onto something: there's not much political science that is better as a book than as a paper.

The Daily Show Interview Page lists the 16 most recent guests.

There are 7 authors promoting their books, 5 actors, 3 columnists (all of whom have written books) and a musician.

So that's 62.5% author, pretty impressive.

"Every author thinks they're going to hit the motherlode. And who are we to begrudge them the effort?"

Every author should learn grammar before he (or she) puts pen to paper (or finger to keyboard).

God save the English language!

Andrew you’re not a crankygrammarian, my comment was just sloppy. Serves me right for typing while talking on the phone!

I hesitate to even post here with all of you pedants ready to strike. If Mandelbaum, Friedman, and others are for elementary and high school students, then what would you recommend as the next level? At least provide the name of a periodical or text for the unwashed masses! Foreign Policy? Foreign Affairs? Do I need to know a secret handshake or something?

Building on point 1: the popular books seem to me to usually be an effort to translate IR theory - which almost by definition is a backward-looking effort to provide a framework for explaining events that have taken place in the past - into forward looking policies recommendations.

I'm not much of an academic, but I have to believe that once you've put the time and energy into studying a problem, you really really want to tell people what to do about it, or at least why your explanation of a past event or pattern of events relates to current (or future) ones. You can't do that much in peer-review since there's no clearly testable hypothesis in a recommendation for future policies.

ditto on Chris Albon's comment, completely.

As for Doug's question about reading, I also wonder what folks could consider wuality intermediate reading - beyond pop stuff like Friedman, yet not academic texts. FA is good, also the Economist. Danieldrezner.com/blog?

And there I go, adding fodder for the grammar/spelling police. Of course I meant "quality"...

Perhaps all of us of the younger generation should focus on one task at a time.

Doug: Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy are good. For heavy-duty theory, try International Security.

Jane Austen and the singular "their"

http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austheir.html#X1b

FYI

As a IR-obsessed 16-year-old, I feel obliged to say that I actually prefer more scholarly IR work to popular work. About a month ago, I read The Twenty Year's Crisis and Richard Haass' The Opportunity in quick succession, and had such wiplash that, even considering how good many of Haass' policy recommendations were, I found the book hard to enjoy.