Horace Mann - Spring 2017 - 40

Bookshelf

Putin's Master Plan-to Destroy Europe,
Divide NATO, and Restore Russian Power
and Global Influence
By Douglas E. Schoen '70,
with Evan Roth Smith
Encounter Books, September 27, 2016
Putin's Master Plan by
Douglas E. Schoen '70,
with Evan Roth Smith,
contends that Vladimir
Putin has a master plan
to destroy Europe,
divide NATO, reclaim
Russian influence in the
world, and most of all to
marginalize the United
States and the West in order to achieve
regional hegemony and global power. Putin's
Master Plan is the first comprehensive attempt
to systematically explain the Russian leader's
global strategy in a meaningful way, showing
that this plan is one which could inevitably and
inexorably lead to the breakup of the NATO
alliance, and potentially to war with the West,
according to Schoen. Yet, currently, the West
has no strategy, no plan, and no tactics to
confront Putin's master plan other than
imposing limited economic sanctions, which
have done little to deter Putin's aggression-
and may well have encouraged and facilitated
it. Schoen's viewpoint offers a clear and sober
portrayal of a situation that serious observers
of European and Russian politics are openly
recognizing and acknowledging. In this book
Schoen, the prominent political consultant
who has worked for the heads of states of over
15 countries, makes the case that it is essential
to wake up to Putin's strategy, and recognize
that Russia's recent level of aggression, most
boldly in its invasions of Georgia and Ukraine,
require a response. Instead, the response of
the U.S. and a divided Europe have left Russia's
neighbors without an alternative to Russian
domination, and even once-stalwart American
allies such as the Republic of Georgia are on
the brink of becoming part of Putin's new
empire in Europe, writes Schoen. In systematically challenging the NATO Alliance as well as
the United States, thus far, Putin is winning.
The Nixon Effect, How Richard Nixon's
Presidency Fundamentally Changed
American Politics
By Douglas E. Schoen '70
Encounter Books, February 9, 2016
Douglas Schoen's '70 The Nixon Effect examines the 37th president's political legacy in
broad-ranging ways that make clear, for the

Horace Mann Magazine Spring 2017

first time, the breadth
and duration of his
influence on American
political life. Other
books have argued for
Nixon's importance, but
this is the first to take
into account the full
range of this fascinating man's influence.
While not discounting Nixon's many misdeeds,
Schoen treats his presidency and its importance with the seriousness-and evenhandedness-the subject deserves. The book argues
that Nixon is the key political figure in postwar
American politics in multiple ways, some barely acknowledged until now. His legacy includes
a generational shift in the ideological orientations of both the Republican and Democratic
parties. The Nixon influence, both intentional
and unintentional, was to push both parties
further out to their ideological poles. So stark
was Nixon's influence on party identities that
it shaped the hardened partisan polarization
in Washington today and the evolution of what
has come to be called Red and Blue America.
Stemming in part from these developments, together with Nixon's scorched-earth
political warfare and his Watergate scandal,
we have also seen the evolution of politics
as war, where adversaries and ideological
opponents are considered evil or unpatriotic.
Finally, Nixon's pioneering tactics-from
the identification of the Silent Majority to
the Southern Strategy, from "triangulating"
between both parties and claiming the political center, to launching the culture war with
attacks on "elites" in media, academia, and the
courts-have shaped political communications
and strategy ever since.
Return to Winter: New Cold War
By Douglas E. Schoen '70 and Melik Kaylan
Encounter Books, December 1, 2015
In New Cold War
Douglas Schoen '70
and Melik Kaylan
argued, in 2015, that
the U.S. was a nation in
crisis. With
Washington's ability to
address our most
pressing challenges
rendered nearly
impotent by ongoing partisan warfare, we
face an array of foreign-policy crises for
which we seem increasingly unprepared.
Among these, none is more formidable than

the unprecedented partnership developing
between Russia and China, suspicious
neighbors for centuries and fellow
Communist antagonists during the Cold War.
The two longtime foes have drawn increasingly close together because of a confluence
of geostrategic, political, and economic
interests-all of which have a common
theme of diminishing, subverting, or
displacing American power. While America's
influence around the world recedes-in its
military and diplomatic power, its political
leverage, its economic might, and, perhaps
most dangerously, in the power and appeal
of its ideas-Russia and China have seen
their influence increase. From their support
for rogue regimes such as those in Iran,
North Korea, and Syria to their military and
nuclear buildups, to their aggressive use of
cyber warfare and intelligence theft,
Moscow and Beijing are playing the game for
keeps. The authors systematically chronicle
the growing threat from the RussianChinese Axis, and argue that only a rebirth of
American global leadership can counter the
impact of this antidemocratic alliance, which
they see as threatening the peace and
security of the world.
See Yourself X
By Madeline Schwartzman '79
Black Dog Publishing, October 2016
See Yourself X (SYX) is
the second volume of
architect and filmmaker
Madeline
Schwartzman's '79
timely series that looks
at human perception
and the sensory
apparatus. See Yourself Sensing: Redefining
Human Perception (2011)-the first of the
series, is a collection of 50 years of futuristic
proposals for the body and the senses. See
Yourself X focuses in on our fundamental
perceptual domain-the human head-presenting an array of conceptual and constructed ideas for extending ourselves physically into
space. The book asks, what will be the physical
future of the head and the sensory apparatus
in 50 years, as the mechanisms for how we
communicate and sense change becomes
obsolete, prompted by the advancement of
brain-to-brain communication? SYX looks at
where we are now, in the hope of projecting
into that future. The book explores all forms of
physical head augmentation, including new
organs, hair extensions and hairdos, masks,

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Horace Mann - Spring 2017