Reviews for Commonsense and the theory of international politics

The average rating for Commonsense and the theory of international politics based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-02-16 00:00:00 Ray Thomas I've read 2/3 of this which is about all I can stand. What a LABORIOUS read. It's a bunch of essays and studies from thinkers (philosophers, scholarly types, world leaders) on international relations from the ancient Greeks thru the 90s. I think the editor Vasquez is well-intentioned and I did enjoy a few, like Howard Zinn writing on Vietnam as it was happening and Gandhi breaking down nonviolence. But it's just too much for one book. Or maybe it's too much to have to read 150-200 pages of this dense stuff per week. A large portion of the articles are just a bunch of scholars going back and forth about very esoteric topics. That was the hardest part of reading this book. Nevertheless, for someone who knew jack to little about International Relations, I now feel substantially informed of the fundamentals. (I apologize for saying "nevertheless" because that's not how i talk but I write papers nowadays.)

Review # 2 was written on 2015-05-31 00:00:00 Michael Smith I'm reading this right after Mustafa Akyol's "Islam Without Extremes" and this guy, while he does the valuable service of pointing out, as Akyol does, that neither side is blameless, is too quick to assert that things that Akyol argues are cultural are essential to Islam, while not part of christianity. If you're not a christian, I'd go with Akyol's book, which goes into more depth and doesn't have all the christian cheerleading this book does. He manages not to know that Mustafa Kemal and Kemal Ataturk were the same person, which makes me even more dubious of his scholarship. He also repeats himself too much.