Toward The Geopolitical Novel

Caren Irr's survey of more than 125 novels outlines the dramatic resurgence of the American political novel in the twenty-first century. She explores the writings of Chris Abani, Susan Choi, Edwidge Danticat, Junot Díaz, Dave Eggers, Jeffrey Eugenides, Aleksandar Hemon, Hari Kunzru, Dinaw Mengestu, Norman Rush, Gary Shteyngart, and others as they rethink stories of migration, the Peace Corps, nationalism and neoliberalism, revolution, and the expatriate experience. Taken together, these innovations define a new literary form: the geopolitical novel. More cosmopolitan and socially critical than domestic realism, the geopolitical novel provides new ways of understanding crucial political concepts to meet the needs of a new century.

Charting the contours of the long turn of the century, from 1860 to 1940, and studying a range of writers, genres, and disciplines, this book moves back and forth from Victorian to modernist fields of study to show how the 19th-century European hypothesis of culture haunts the 20th-century fiction of geopolitics.

Forecast geopolitics and markets with this clear and insightful resource Geopolitical Alpha – An Investment Framework for Predicting the Future provides readers with an original and compelling approach to forecasting the future and beating the markets while doing so. Persuasively written by author, investment strategist, and geopolitical analyst Marko Papic, the book applies a novel framework for making sense of the cacophony of geopolitical risks with the eye towards generating investment-relevant insights. Geopolitical Alpha posits that investors should ignore the media-hyped narratives, insights from "smoke-filled rooms," and most of their political consultants and, instead, focus exclusively on the measurable, material constraints facing policymakers. In the tug-of-war between policymaker preferences and their constraints, the latter always win out in the end. Papic uses a wealth of examples from the past decade to illustrate how one can use his constraint-framework to generate Geopolitical Alpha. In the process, the book discusses: What paradigm shifts will drive investment returns over the next decade Why investment and corporate professionals can no longer treat geopolitics as an exogenous risk How to ignore the media and focus on what drives market narratives that generate returns Perfect for investors, C-suite executives, and investment professionals, Geopolitical Alpha belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in the intersection of geopolitics, economics, and finance.

*One of Bloomberg's Best Books of the Year* The master geopolitical forecaster and New York Times bestselling author of The Next 100 Years focuses on the United States, predicting how the 2020s will bring dramatic upheaval and reshaping of American government, foreign policy, economics, and culture. In his riveting new book, noted forecaster and bestselling author George Friedman turns to the future of the United States. Examining the clear cycles through which the United States has developed, upheaved, matured, and solidified, Friedman breaks down the coming years and decades in thrilling detail. American history must be viewed in cycles—particularly, an eighty-year "institutional cycle" that has defined us (there are three such examples—the Revolutionary War/founding, the Civil War, and World War II), and a fifty-year "socio-economic cycle" that has seen the formation of the industrial classes, baby boomers, and the middle classes. These two major cycles are both converging on the late 2020s—a time in which many of these foundations will change. The United States will have to endure upheaval and possible conflict, but also, ultimately, increased strength, stability, and power in the world. Friedman's analysis is detailed and fascinating, and covers issues such as the size and scope of the federal government, the future of marriage and the social contract, shifts in corporate structures, and new cultural trends that will react to longer life expectancies. This new book is both provocative and entertaining.

"Develops a geographic approach to the politics of spectacle and its unspectacular Others through examining recent spectacular capital city development projects in seven authoritarian, resource-rich states of Central Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, and East Asia"--

Today’s investors need to understand geopolitical trends as a main driving force of markets. This book provides just that: an understanding of the interplay between geopolitics and economics, and of the impact of that dynamic on financial markets. To me, geo-economics is the study of how geopolitics and economics interact in international relations. Plenty of books on geopolitics have been written by eminent experts in politics and international affairs. This book is not one of them. First, I am neither a political scientist nor an expert in international affairs. I am an economist and an investment strategist who has been fascinated by geopolitics for many years. And this fascination has led me to the realization that almost all books and articles written on geopolitics are useless for investors. Political scientists are not trained to think like investors, and they are not typically trained in quantitative methods. Instead, they engage in developing narratives for geopolitical events and processes that pose risks and opportunities for investors. My main problem with these narratives is that they usually do not pass the “so what?” test. Geopolitical risks are important, but how am I to assess which risks are important for my portfolio and which ones are simply noise? Because geopolitics experts focus on politics, they do not provide an answer to this crucial question for investors. What could be important for a geopolitics expert and for global politics could be totally irrelevant for investors. For example, the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been going on for almost two decades now and have been an important influence on the political discussion in the United States. But for investors, the war in Afghanistan was a total nonevent, and the war in Iraq had only a fleeting influence, when it started in 2003. Geopolitics experts cannot answer the question of which geopolitical events matter for investors and which do not. Unfortunately, some experts thus claim that all geopolitical risks matter and that these risks cannot be quantified but only assessed qualitatively. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the chapters that follow, I discuss geopolitical and geo-economic events from the viewpoint of an investor and show that they can be quantified and introduced as part of a traditional risk management process. I do this in two parts. The first part of this book focuses on geopolitics that matters to investors. It reviews the literature on a range of geopolitical events and shows which events have a material economic effect and which do not. The second part of this book puts the insights from those first chapters into practice by applying them to current geopolitical trends. In this second part, I stick my head out and examine the impact the geopolitical trends have on the economy and financial markets today and their likely development in the coming years. —Joachim Klement, CFA

This major reference collection highlights the contested and diverse nature of geopolitics and charts the controversial intellectual history of the field. Coined by the Swedish author, Rudolf Kjellén, the term 'geopolitics' highlights the role that territory, resources and boundaries play in shaping global political relations. The collection brings together work from international relations, political science, history, geography and law into a definitive collection that covers three dimensions of the geopolitical: classic geopolitics, critical geopolitics, and popular geopolitics.

With a critical focus on US-Latin American encounters, the book analyses geopolitical issues from a post-colonial perspective. A novel approach to understanding US-Third World relations. Critically considers the genesis of US power. Interweaves ideas and events, interventions and representations. Highlights the contribution of Third World intellectuals.