Global Horizons: An Introduction to International Relations

Description:

"Spruyt has written an outstanding text that leaves students informed and motivated, while at the same time providing splendidly balanced coverage of multiple issue areas and approaches." - Colin Elman, Maxwell School, Syracuse University

Brief description:

Hendrik Spruyt is Norman Dwight Harris Professor of International Relations at Northwestern University. He is the author of The Sovereign State and its Competitors (Princeton University Press, 1994), which won the J. David Greenstone Prize for best book in History and Politics, 1994-96. His most recent book is Ending Empire: Contested Sovereignty and Territorial Partition (Cornell University Press, 2005).

Review Quotes:

Global Horizons is a compelling volume for undergraduate audiences. Framed to elicit solutions to gripping global problems, readers will find themselves thinking critically, worrying about research design, and using sophisticated theoretical tools. Spruyt has written an outstanding text that leaves students informed and motivated, while at the same time providing splendidly balanced coverage of multiple issue areas and approaches.

International relations instructors who seek to provide students with a timely mix of focused theories and engaging case studies will embrace Global Horizons. Spruyt vividly animates the most important analytical debates in the field and uses them to illuminate classic historical episodes as well as critically important contemporary issues such as the US-led invasion of Iraq, global energy security, and international efforts to regulate climate change.

International relations theory is vast and complex, and yet if explained clearly and systematically it can be an invaluable aid that enables students to gain a sophisticated grasp of the forces shaping the world. In this engaging, lucid, smart, and comprehensive book, Spruyt makes theory--the 'tools of the trade'--come alive. Global Horizons is the text for which many of us who teach IR have been waiting: instructors and students who read it will reap rich intellectual rewards.