In his long career as an acclaimed journalist covering the “hot” moments of the Cold War and its aftermath, Robert D. Kaplan often found himself crossing paths with Bob Gersony, a consultant for the U.S. State Department whose quiet dedication and consequential work made a deep impression on Kaplan. Gersony, a high school dropout later awarded a Bronze Star for his service in Vietnam, conducted on-the-ground research for the U.S. government in virtually every war and natural-disaster zone in the world. Kaplan saw in Gersony a powerful example of how American diplomacy should be conducted. Set during the State Department’s golden age, THE GOOD AMERICAN is a story about the loneliness, sweat and tears, and the genuine courage, that characterized Gersony’s work in far-flung places.

Robert Kaplan first visited Romania in the 1970s, when he was a young journalist and the country was a bleak Communist backwater. It was one of the darkest corners of Europe, but few Westerners were paying attention. What ensued was a lifelong obsession with a critical, often overlooked country --- a country that, today, is key to understanding the current threat that Russia poses to Europe. Through the lens of one country, Kaplan examines larger questions of geography, imperialism, the role of fate in international relations, the Cold War, the Holocaust and more.

In THE REVENGE OF GEOGRAPHY, Robert D. Kaplan, the bestselling author of MONSOON and BALKAN GHOSTS, builds on the insights, discoveries and theories of great geographers and geopolitical thinkers of the near and distant past to look back at critical pivots in history and then to look forward at the evolving global scene.