IR : The New World of International Relations (6th Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Learning "International Relations" the American way
Review: This is the worst text I have used in any class in all of my years of learning. When reading through pages and pages of endless propaganda, blatant racism, and American-centralized pseudo-IR, one finds oneself screaming at both the authors and the teacher who chose to use this text. With sentences such as, "Hmm, this looks like a job for Accounting man!" and "...three decades in power is bound to make any rule a little funny" combined with the generally bad practice of using "us" and "we" when referring to the United States, this text makes the read wonder if the authors are writing a text for 4th grade or 12th grade. One plus is the use of concrete examples throughout to support the major points; however, when incident after incident of terrorism is strung together in a single paragraph, the reader starts to loose track of the point Mr.'s Roskin and Berry are trying to prove. A perfect example of the wandering minds of the authors is in the chapter entitled "Terrorism" where the authors proceed to group and blindly psychoanalyze all terrorists without consideration of the individual reasons for their resorting to terrorism. Pervading the middle pages of this text is an anti-Islam racism reminiscent of the initial accusations following the Oklahoma City bombing. I wonder what else the publishers at Prentice Hall were offered at the time they accepted to print The New World of International Relations. If you are forced to read this book, I pity you; if you are deciding whether to read this book or use it to teach, I discourage you; if you wrote this book, I curse you.

Rating:
Summary: Are they serious?
Review: This is the worst text I have used in any class in all of my years of learning. When reading through pages and pages of endless propaganda, blatant racism, and American-centralized pseudo-IR, one finds oneself screaming at both the authors and the teacher who chose to use this text. With sentences such as, "Hmm, this looks like a job for Accounting man!" and "...three decades in power is bound to make any rule a little funny" combined with the generally bad practice of using "us" and "we" when referring to the United States, this text makes the read wonder if the authors are writing a text for 4th grade or 12th grade. One plus is the use of concrete examples throughout to support the major points; however, when incident after incident of terrorism is strung together in a single paragraph, the reader starts to loose track of the point Mr.'s Roskin and Berry are trying to prove. A perfect example of the wandering minds of the authors is in the chapter entitled "Terrorism" where the authors proceed to group and blindly psychoanalyze all terrorists without consideration of the individual reasons for their resorting to terrorism. Pervading the middle pages of this text is an anti-Islam racism reminiscent of the initial accusations following the Oklahoma City bombing. I wonder what else the publishers at Prentice Hall were offered at the time they accepted to print The New World of International Relations. If you are forced to read this book, I pity you; if you are deciding whether to read this book or use it to teach, I discourage you; if you wrote this book, I curse you.

Rating:
Summary: Learning "International Relations" the American way
Review: We, the summer session class at Phillips Academy Andover, feel that this book is biased and too opinionated. The authors side too much with the US government, when really international relations is about being unbiased and constructing policies that are fair to all nations. This book clearly does not outline the history of foreign policy accurately--rather it presents ego centric America-loving behaviour. Sadly, we are forced to read this slanted piece of text for class, and in doing so, have actually grown to understand the American view point of things extremely well. Too well in fact, that we realize what kind of relations America practices and understand why the rest of the world dislikes "us", the Americans (correctly following the format of a majority of the chapters in this textbook).