Walt's Top Ten IR Book List

Stephen Walt offers a "top ten list" on IR books to read for leisure. Below is the list:

1. Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War.

2. Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel.

3. Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence.

4. James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed.

5. David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest.

6. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics.

7. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.

8. Ernst Gellner, Nations and Nationalism.

9. Henry A. Kissinger, White House Years & Years of Upheaval.

10. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation.

In general, this list leans more towards security and classics.

Walt offers another "top ten" list on IR books written by women scholars. As follows:

1. Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision.

2. Susan Strange, States and Markets.

3. Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force.

4. Frances FitzGerald, Fire in the Lake: Vietnamese and Americans in Vietnam. 

5. Kathryn Sikkink and Margaret Keck, Activists beyond Border: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. 

6. Samantha Power, "A Problem from Hell": American in the Age of Genocide.

7. Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action.

8. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions.

9. Beth Simmons, Who Adjusts?: Domestic Sources of Foreign Economic Policy during the Interwar Years, 1923-1939.

10. Valerie Hudson and Andrea Den Boer, Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population.