Essentials of International Relations

Description

This book is disappointing. The book starts with, and then each chapter returns rather clunkily to, the division between liberalists, realists, radicalists, etc. As in: This is the international system. This is how liberalists see it...and realists...and radicalists... This is war and strife. This is how liberalists see it... and realists... etc. You get the idea! This makes for a fatally dull and "heavy" approach to a discipline that can be so exciting if handled properly. Mingst gives students the impression that the whole point of IR is trying to decide which of the -isms is the most valid. It would have been much better to take a less theory-laden approach in the early chapters, allowing students to come up with their own explanations/interpretations of things, and then introduce all the -isms in later chapters. Finally, the book is just not very clearly written. More than once I was at a loss to explain sentences that my students asked me to explain.