America Unbound:
The Bush Revolution
in Foreign Policy
by Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay
Brookings Institution Press, 2003

When George W. Bush took office, he was widely criticized for his inexperience in world affairs, and many thought that the more seasoned members of his cabinet would dictate his foreign policy. In America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy, Ivo H. Daalder, a senior fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, and James M. Lindsay, vice president and director of studies of the Council on Foreign Relations, explain how President Bush has brought about a foreign policy revolution based not on deep knowledge of international politics but on firm convictions about America’s international role. Moreover, they argue that Bush, not his advisors, has orchestrated this revolution, noting that he chose cabinet members and foreign policy advisors who share his “hegemonist” worldview, which sees America as a unique power that must not be bound by international coalitions and treaties unless they are in its own interest. Daalder and Lindsay, both members of the National Security Council under President Clinton, also analyze how the war against terrorism has tested this principle, offering their assessment of the Bush Administration’s successes and failures in Afghanistan and Iraq. Regarding Iraq, the authors say that while the war itself was an extraordinary success, the attempt at what they call “nation-building lite” was a failure. Daalder and Lindsay suggest that although it is too early to judge whether Bush’s foreign policy revolution will ultimately be successful, in one respect—assuming that overwhelming power alone is enough to achieve America’s goals—it has already been proven wrong.

Franchise Value:
A Modern Approach
to Security Analysis
by Martin L. Leibowitz
John Wiley and Sons, Inc. 2004

Inside the Yield Book: The Classic That
Created the Science of Bond Analysis
by Sidney Homer and Martin L. Leibowitz
Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1972; Bloomberg Press, 2004

Martin Leibowitz, vice chairman of Carnegie Corporation of New York’s board of trustees, is currently a managing director in the research department of Morgan Stanley; prior to that, for nine years he was vice chairman and chief investment officer of TIAA-CREF, overseeing more than $300 billion in investments. The author of several previous books and more than 130 articles, Leibowitz has now written Franchise Value: A Modern Approach to Security Analysis, which provides investment practitioners with a comprehensive guide to price/earnings ratios and equity valuations. The franchise value (FV) approach, explains Leibowitz, springs from work he and an associate, Stanley Kogelman, undertook in the late 1980s at Salomon Brothers. Discussing the development of FV, Leibowitz writes, “We had been asked to develop a valuation model to advance our understanding of a foreign equity market…One of the key questions was how much an investor should be willing to pay for the market’s exceptional rate of growth. Since it was well known that not all forms of earnings growth contribute to a firm’s value, Stan and I tried to probe more deeply into the value-additive component of growth, which we chose to characterize by the term ‘franchise value.’” One reviewer said the book was “A bold investigation into the basis for common stock valuation that will challenge conventional thinking about such basic ideas as earnings
and growth.”

Along with the late Sidney Homer, who was the founder and general partner in charge of Salomon Brothers’ bond market research department, Leibowitz is also the co-author of Inside the Yield Book, first published in 1972 and reissued this year. This updated edition of the classic volume, which has been in print for over 30 years, “explains and makes sense of essential mathematical relationships that are basic to an understanding of bonds, annuities, loans…any securities or investments that involve compound interest and the determination of present value for future cash flows.” Frank J. Fabozzi, Editor of the Journal of Portfolio Management and Frederick Frank Adjunct Professor of Finance at Yale University’s School of Management has written of Inside the Yield, “This book transformed the markets’ understanding of bonds. The new material in this expanded edition extend those insights to equities and other investments…”

The New York Times Guide for
Immigrants in New York City
by Joan P. Nassivera, in partnership with
the Lower East Side Tenement Museum
Thomas Dunne Books, 2004

Many immigrants who arrive in New York City have neither family nor friends in their new home, and nobody to help them solve basic problems like finding housing and employment. Those from countries where government officials and the police are feared often distrust groups that can help them. The New York Times Guide for Immigrants in New York City
is an important resource that provides answers to many critical questions immigrants may have, such as how to find a job, enroll their children in school, open a bank account or get medical care. The Guide, which was supported by Carnegie Corporation and other foundations, also offers advice for dealing with a host of legal and practical problems including how to work towards citizenship as well as where to take free English classes. While there are many places in New York where immigrants can go for help, recent arrivals may have no way of connecting with them. That is why one of the most valuable sections of the Guide is probably the resource directory, which lists names and contact information for the many agencies, services, and groups that be of assistance to immigrants and details the services each provides, in what languages and for whom. Helpfully, the book is divided into three sections where the information is provided first in English, then Spanish, and then Chinese.

Islam in Russia:
the Politics of Identity and Security
by Shireen T. Hunter
M.E. Sharpe, 2004

Islam in Russia: the Politics of Identity and Security is a thorough study of Islam’s influence on post-Soviet Russia. Shireen T. Hunter, director of the Islam Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, explores the role of the “Islamic factor” in developing Russia’s national identity and its impact on Russia’s relations with both the West and Muslim nations. Hunter begins with a history of Russian-Arab relations, from the Mongol invasion to the present day, explaining how the patterns of conquest, assimilation, and resistance have made Russians and Muslims view one another as the “hostile other.” Since the fall of the Soviet Union, many predominantly Muslim areas of Russia have struggled for both cultural and geographic independence; however, many Orthodox Russians have increasingly asserted their nation’s cultural and religious homogeneity, a conflict that complicates the development of a civic, multiethnic Russian identity, and may eventually endanger Russia’s stability. Islam in Russia, which was supported by a grant from Carnegie Corporation, also painstakingly examines the way Islam has shaped Russia’s foreign relations, particularly since the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and analyzes the international importance of the wars with Chechnya, as well as the way they have radicalized both Islamic fundamentalists and Russian nationalists. The book is an important study of the interplay of religion, history, politics and national identity, providing critical new insights for policymakers, scholars and the public.

Hunter is also the author of Modernization and Democratization in the Muslim World: Obstacles and Remedies (Center for Strategic and International Studies, April 2004), which provides a wide-ranging and objective overview of the Muslim world, incorporating politics, history, economics and development issues, while also exploring the “Muslim world’s modernization and democracy gap.”

Learning to Live Together: Preventing Hatred
and Violence in Child and Adolescent Development
by David A. Hamburg, M.D. and Beatrix A. Hamburg, M.D.
Oxford University Press, 2004

In Learning to Live Together, David Hamburg, president emeritus of Carnegie Corporation of New York and his wife, Beatrix Hamburg, a visiting scholar in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University’s Weill Medical College, apply their experience in the field of conflict resolution and human development to examine how children can be taught cooperation and tolerance rather than hatred and prejudice. The authors argue that despite the historical pervasiveness of warfare, it is preventable, and the immense destructive power of modern weaponry makes conflict avoidance a necessity. In attempting to avert violent group conflicts, scholars have focused on political and economic means of deterrence, as Hamburg did in his 2002 book No More Killing Fields. Now, in Learning to Live Together, the Hamburgs examine the potential of education to prevent hostility and violence on all levels: in families, in communities, among diverse ethnic and religious groups, and among nations, postulating that, if hatred can be taught, so too can tolerance and cooperation. They note, however, that prejudice is to some degree inherent in group psychology, and hence “education everywhere has been ethnocentric—and all too often virulently prejudicial.” As a remedy, the authors—in this profoundly hopeful book—advocate an expansion of “peace education,” a form of conflict-resolution instruction that addresses large-scale group conflicts. They explain how, with the help of universities, international organizations, and foundations, both industrialized and developing nations can realize the potential of peace education to teach intergroup cooperation.

The Promotion of Social Awareness: Powerful
Lessons from the Partnership of Developmental
Theory and Classroom Practice
by Robert L. Selman
Russell Sage Foundation, 2003

The social behavior that children learn in elementary and middle school can vitally affect their futures, yet teachers everywhere rarely include social skills education in their lesson plans. How can educators promote positive, healthy social interactions while still teaching basic academic skills? Since the early 1970s, the Group for the Study of Interpersonal Development, an informal coalition of researchers, has investigated this question in schools from Boston to Iceland. Robert L. Selman, professor of education and human development at Harvard Graduate School and professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School, documents their 30 years of creative research in The Promotion of Social Awareness which was written, in part, with Corporation support under its focus in prior years on early childhood development. The original foundations of Selman’s research were the theories of moral development established by the psychologists Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, which postulate that moral development comes primarily through recognizing different points of view and having positive social relationships. Selman and his colleagues began researching these theories by presenting at-risk children in Boston-area public schools with brief stories that made them consider moral or social dilemmas. This allowed the researchers to expand their predecessors’ theories by identifying different stages of social skills development. Their work also showed that literature can be very effective in making children consider different points of view. Selman and his colleagues next addressed a practical problem: integrating their theories into the curriculum. Together with the Voices of Love and Freedom, a group that tries to advance cultural and social awareness in elementary schools, they developed a program to combine literacy education with social and conflict-resolution skills. The Promotion of Social Awareness describes this program using extensive examples from the classroom, and offers insightful conclusions about both the potential and the difficulty of bringing developmental theory to our public schools.

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