Books by Robert D. Kaplan

“[An] elegantly layered exploration of Europe’s past and future . . . a multifaceted masterpiece.”—The Wall Street Journal“A lovely, personal journey around the Adriatic, in which Robert Kaplan revisits places and peoples he first encountered decades ago.”—Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk RoadsONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New YorkerIn this insightful travelogue, Robert D. Kaplan, geopolitical expert and bestselling author of Balkan Ghosts and The Revenge of Geography, turns his perceptive eye to a region that for centuries has been a meeting point of cultures, trade, and ideas. He undertakes a journey around the Adriatic Sea, through Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, and Greece, to reveal that far more is happening in the region than most news stories let on. Often overlooked, the Adriatic is in fact at the center of the most significant challenges of our time, including the rise of populist politics, the refugee crisis, and battles over the control of energy resources. And it is once again becoming a global trading hub that will determine Europe’s relationship with the rest of the world as China and Russia compete for dominance in its ports. Kaplan explores how the region has changed over his three decades of observing it as a journalist. He finds that to understand both the historical and contemporary Adriatic is to gain a window on the future of Europe as a whole, and he unearths a stark truth: The era of populism is an epiphenomenon—a symptom of the age of nationalism coming to an end. Instead, the continent is returning to alignments of the early modern era as distinctions between East and West meet and break down within the Adriatic countries and ultimately throughout Europe. With a brilliant cross-pollination of history, literature, art, architecture, and current events, in Adriatic, Kaplan demonstrates that this unique region that exists at the intersection of civilizations holds revelatory truths for the future of global affairs.

Met zijn indrukwekkende achtergrond in de internationale politiek beschrijft Robert Kaplan zijn reizen door Afghanistan en Pakistan in ‘Soldaten van God’. In de jaren ‘80 verbleef hij bij de mujahedin, een Islamitische militante groepering die Russische gevechtstroepen buiten Afghanistan wist te houden. Hij reisde zij aan zij met deze groep en ervoer hun angsten en passie van dichtbij. Jaren na Kaplan’s buitengewone reizen vertelt hij over de erbarmelijke toestanden in de vluchtelingenkampen, de levens van de soldaten en de wrede oorlog die geen einde leek te kennen. ‘Soldaten van God’ geeft je een unieke kans om de landen die zo vaak in het nieuws verschijnen, van binnen te begrijpen. Robert D. Kaplan is een Amerikaanse schrijver en journalist. Hij schreef onder meer boeken over internationale politiek en reisverhalen en zijn artikelen verschenen in vooraanstaande kranten zoals The Washington Post, The New York Times en The Wall Street Journal. Naast schrijver was Kaplan van 2009 tot 2011 lid van de Defense Policy Board van het Pentagon en belandde hij in 2011 in de ‘Top 100 Global Thinkers’.

Schrijver Robert Kaplan neemt je mee op reis naar de Balkan en voert je via het Midden-Oosten mee richting Centraal-Azië. Onderweg vertelt Kaplan over de landen waar velen eigenlijk verrassend weinig van weten. Zo bezoekt hij Bakoe, de nieuwe oliehoofdstad van de wereld, de woestijnen van Turkmenistan en de verschillende etniciteiten in de Balkan. Gaandeweg leer je verhalend over de tragische geschiedenis en politieke ontwikkelingen. Ook maakt bij parallellen tussen Oost en West. Wat kunnen wij van de landen in het oosten leren? Ontdek het in ‘Oostwaarts’, het boeiende reisverslag van Robert Kaplan. Robert D. Kaplan is een Amerikaanse schrijver en journalist. Hij schreef onder meer boeken over internationale politiek en reisverhalen en zijn artikelen verschenen in vooraanstaande kranten zoals The Washington Post, The New York Times en The Wall Street Journal. Naast schrijver was Kaplan van 2009 tot 2011 lid van de Defense Policy Board van het Pentagon en belandde hij in 2011 in de ‘Top 100 Global Thinkers’.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this "ambitious and challenging" (The New York Review of Books) work, the bestselling author of Monsoon and Balkan Ghosts offers a revelatory prism through which to view global upheavals and to understand what lies ahead for continents and countries around the world.In The Revenge of Geography, Robert D. Kaplan builds on the insights, discoveries, and theories of great geographers and geopolitical thinkers of the near and distant past to look back at critical pivots in history and then to look forward at the evolving global scene. Kaplan traces the history of the world's hot spots by examining their climates, topographies, and proximities to other embattled lands. The Russian steppe's pitiless climate and limited vegetation bred hard and cruel men bent on destruction, for example, while Nazi geopoliticians distorted geopolitics entirely, calculating that space on the globe used by the British Empire and the Soviet Union could be swallowed by a greater German homeland.Kaplan then applies the lessons learned to the present crises in Europe, Russia, China, the Indian subcontinent, Turkey, Iran, and the Arab Middle East. The result is a holistic interpretation of the next cycle of conflict throughout Eurasia. Remarkably, the future can be understood in the context of temperature, land allotment, and other physical certainties: China, able to feed only 23 percent of its people from land that is only 7 percent arable, has sought energy, minerals, and metals from such brutal regimes as Burma, Iran, and Zimbabwe, putting it in moral conflict with the United States. Afghanistan's porous borders will keep it the principal invasion route into India, and a vital rear base for Pakistan, India's main enemy. Iran will exploit the advantage of being the only country that straddles both energy-producing areas of the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. Finally, Kaplan posits that the United States might rue engaging in far-flung conflicts with Iraq and Afghanistan rather than tending to its direct neighbor Mexico, which is on the verge of becoming a semifailed state due to drug cartel carnage.A brilliant rebuttal to thinkers who suggest that globalism will trump geography, this indispensable work shows how timeless truths and natural facts can help prevent this century's looming cataclysms.