Wonder and Worry: contemporary history in an age of uncertainty (Hardback)

The current global order appears to be collapsing. Long forgotten challenges, such as the return of great power competition and the specter of nuclear war, demand fresh attention, while novel, complex, and menacing planetary crises ranging from climate and disease to emerging technology loom. Meanwhile, the United States—the most consequential nation in the international system, behaves erratically and seems willing to abandon its decades-long strategy of building strong alliances, countering authoritarianism and supporting openness. Legacy institutions, and in particular, elite universities, appear unable to meet the moment and provide the scholarly insight and training needed to navigate this new world. How should we understand these unsettling trends?

Wonder and Worry offers Francis J. Gavin's best insights on the pressing, fundamental questions we face. What is the state of world politics and the international system? What has been and should be America’s role in the global order? And what is the most effective way to evaluate, generate insight, and teach the next generation how to answer the first two questions? Gavin’s answers are nuanced, counterintuitive, and often surprisingly optimistic. Wonder and Worry is an incisive and accessible contemporary history for our uncertain age.

“Worried about the world? Frank Gavin combines great historical perspective with important current insights in this very readable volume.” - Joseph Nye, Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at Harvard University and author of A Life in the American Century

“This is a brilliant collection of essays, full of humanity and humour but also a force of argument that will dislodge even the most tenaciously held illusions. Few are better than Professor Gavin at assessing the “state of the field”, whether that be prevailing thinking about international affairs or the pathologies of the academy. Taken collectively, these interventions represent some of the most refined and distilled thinking about the study of statecraft and the application of history to contemporary affairs in the transatlantic world today." - John Bew, Professor of History and Foreign Policy, King’s College London

”Fascinating read.” - Graham Tillett Allison Jr., Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

"Francis Gavin stands among our the most perceptive and original strategic thinkers of our era, and this jewel of a volume collects a decade of his reflections. With wit, verve, and a subtle historical sensibility, he draws on the insights of the past to clarify the challenges of the present -- and limns a prudently hopeful path for the future." - Will Inboden, Director of the Hamilton Center, University of Florida and author of the award winning book, The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink

“Frank Gavin is one of the great national security intellectuals of our time, a curator of ideas, and mentor to good work in others. This overdue collection of his own work reveals the trajectory of his thinking in so many edifying ways!” - Kori Schake, senior fellow and the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Author of “America vs the West: Can the Liberal World Order Be Preserved?”