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samitakamaki's review
5.0
Like a lot of the other reviewers have pointed out, this book is really well written, and reading it was a breeze. It is essentially a introduction to the field of International Relations, but it eschews the common format seen in other textbooks, and is better off for it.
Rather than having a bunch of chapters on each theoretical branch, and then moving on to theoretically uniformed discussions of major global issues like most textbooks, Nye introduces the mainstream theories (realism, liberalism and constructivism; he spends only a few pages on Marxist theories, and none on critical/post-modern explanations), and then goes on to (more or less) systematically applying them to important historical and current events.
By doing so he not only exposes in what settings the various theories works best, but also how they are all necessary to map out all the causal links necessary to explain complex international phenomena. By doing so he convincingly argues for a pragmatical theoretical pluralism instead of the dogmatism that seems to have hounded IR research for so long.
Since it was an introductory text it felt pretty basic -naturally. However, his systematic approach helped to connect a few dots in my head, especially about the nature of the relationship between the different theories, as well as giving me a more complete understanding of the time between the Napoleonic wars and WWII.
His friendly style of writing can get a bit too silly sometimes though, and several of his jokes and metaphors are downright cringe worthy. Like when he states that the Prisoner's Dilemma makes conflict highly probable, but not inevitable, because "after all, the Joker in The Dark Knight constructed a version of the Prisoner's Dilemma for the passengers on the two Gotham City ferries wired with explosives, but they opted to cooperate rather than defect." Ugh.
Still though, if you've never read about IR before, you can do a lot worse than this.
Rather than having a bunch of chapters on each theoretical branch, and then moving on to theoretically uniformed discussions of major global issues like most textbooks, Nye introduces the mainstream theories (realism, liberalism and constructivism; he spends only a few pages on Marxist theories, and none on critical/post-modern explanations), and then goes on to (more or less) systematically applying them to important historical and current events.
By doing so he not only exposes in what settings the various theories works best, but also how they are all necessary to map out all the causal links necessary to explain complex international phenomena. By doing so he convincingly argues for a pragmatical theoretical pluralism instead of the dogmatism that seems to have hounded IR research for so long.
Since it was an introductory text it felt pretty basic -naturally. However, his systematic approach helped to connect a few dots in my head, especially about the nature of the relationship between the different theories, as well as giving me a more complete understanding of the time between the Napoleonic wars and WWII.
His friendly style of writing can get a bit too silly sometimes though, and several of his jokes and metaphors are downright cringe worthy. Like when he states that the Prisoner's Dilemma makes conflict highly probable, but not inevitable, because "after all, the Joker in The Dark Knight constructed a version of the Prisoner's Dilemma for the passengers on the two Gotham City ferries wired with explosives, but they opted to cooperate rather than defect." Ugh.
Still though, if you've never read about IR before, you can do a lot worse than this.
nverad's review against another edition
4.0
Satu-satunya buku dari masa kuliah yang masih saya simpan dan dibaca lagi dan lagi... :)