James Denselow

James Denselow is a writer on Middle East politics and security issues and a Director of the New Diplomacy Platform (NDP). He has worked extensively in the Middle East, including research for the foreign policy think tank Chatham House, writing and reporting for several media publications, and communications and advocacy work with international NGOs.

He is a contributing author to "An Iraq of Its Regions: Cornerstones of a Federal Democracy?" and "America and Iraq: Policy-Making, Intervention and Regional Politics Since 1958" and has advised the British Government on its policy toward the Arab Spring. He is a Research Associate at the Foreign Policy Centre (FPC) and a Fellow at the Centre for Syrian Studies (CSS).

Book Reviews by James Denselow

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In this short book filled with drawings and photographs, Edward Ward tells a concise technical service history of the Spitfire, what he describes as the “most important British aircraft of all time

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While you should never judge a book by its title, if Jeff Vandenengel had gone with Too Big to Sail, then you can imagine the book could have courted a wider audience.

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In the shadow of the exponential rise of “big tech” comes journalists like Jeff Horwitz from the Wall Street Journal reporting on it.

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The legendary foreign policy expert John Mearshiemer has partnered up with the University of Notre Dame’s Sebastian Rosato to write a short, thought provoking but slightly clanky book around a simp

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Christopher Miller learned Japanese, wanted to travel to sub-Saharan Africa with the US Peace Corps but ended up being the only American in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in 2010.

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The “Zelensky effect,” according to this accessible and very relevant book, is his ability to mobilise Ukrainian “civic national identity” or “44 million Zelenskys,” as the authors describe it, in

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“her diary is a reminder that the voices of children from the frontlines of the modern world are seldom heard but always important.”

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“without an ability for a nation to protect an objective truth that all political tribes can agree on, there is a substantial challenge in maintaining a healthy American democracy.”

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Brad Stone is a Bloomberg Journalist who has previously written The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon.

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Professor Scott Galloway, who could perhaps be described as a celebrity businessman in a non-derogatory sense, has put together a book that essentially places provocative bets on what the post-pand

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This oral history of the story of COVID-19 in the USA from the start of the year until early June is a helpful reminder as to how much of this year like no other panned out.

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Zakaria’s grasp of the big picture and his ability to channel such a wide narrative in a very readable format should be commended.”

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“Kim Ghattas crafts a layered history engagingly told via an almost fictional style filled with powerful anecdotes.

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In late 2012 the freelance American photographer Matthew Schrier was heading out of Syria after a stint of work when his taxi was stopped.

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Such is the molten hot fury of Syria’s now almost seven-year conflict, that it seems hard to think back to how things were before.

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“the work weeps melancholy and sadness as one would expect from someone who so clearly loves his country.”

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"Kepel skilfully knits together the threads of unemployment in France’s urban departements and how fake news and conspiracy theories help to quickly move the process of radicalizat

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Graeme Wood traces the origins of this work and his pursuit of greater understanding of the Islamic State to having almost been killed by a suicide bomber in Mosul in 2004.

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Rosa Brooks is a law professor at Georgetown who spent two years working at a senior level in the Pentagon.

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The front cover of The Battle for Syria shows a hand composed of the flags of regional and international powers reaching across a bullet-ridden map of Syria.

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Mary Roach is a fairly prolific author who brings humor and common sense to popular science.

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Such is the level of horror coming out of the conflict in Syria and Iraq that people have become numb to the statistics.

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Despite its rather bombastic title Peter Bergen has crafted an intelligent, timely, and important look into the post-9/11 challenge of Bin-Laden inspired terrorism in the United States.

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“one line in the book . . . perhaps sums up the vast journey . . . 'a gun gives that ultimate edge of authority to someone who lacks it through intelligence alone.'”

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Nick Licata, who served four terms on the Seattle City Council, has written a book that proclaims to help educate people on how to become citizen activists but is rather a more local and autobiogra

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Charlie Savage, the Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times journalist, has put together a wide-ranging and important examination of the Obama presidency focusing on the legal-security chall

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Riad Sattouf, the cartoonist and social commentator, has drawn a colorful and engaging first chapter of his three-part autobiography—now in English.