The Foreign Service Journal, November 2022

50 NOVEMBER 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL and currently The Daily Beast . He shared the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service Journalism for The Guardian ’s coverage of the leaks of NSA surveillance information by Edward Snowden in 2013. Drone Strike—Analyzing the Impacts of Targeted Killing Mitt Regan, Palgrave Pivot, 2022, $49.99/hardcover, e-book available, 423 pages. Drone strikes remain a highly con- troversial tool for counterterrorism. The discourse on this kind of warfare requires more nuanced analysis to better understand whether drone strikes actually work. In this book, Mitt Regan rigorously reviews the quantitative and qualitative data on the effects of drone strikes and provides insight based on these empirical findings. According to Daniel Byman, a professor at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, “Examining effects ranging from deaths of civilians to Al Qaeda’s leadership cohesion, Mitt Regan’s balanced answers will please neither drones’ champions nor critics, but they should informwhen and how policymakers use drones in the years to come.” Mitt Regan is McDevitt Professor of Jurisprudence, director of the Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession, and co-director of the Center on National Security at Georgetown University Law Center. He is a senior fellow at the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership at the U.S. Naval Academy. Rebuilding Arab Defense: US Security Cooperation in the Middle East Bilal Y. Saab, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2022, $95/hardcover, e-book available, 249 pages. Security assistance and coopera- tion efforts are at the forefront of U.S. national security policy in many hot spots. The U.S. has provided signifi- cant amounts of assistance to Middle Eastern militaries, especially in recent decades. Why have these efforts often fallen short of expectations, and how can the U.S. better help partners build their defense institutions? Bilal Saab examines these questions through in-depth case studies focus- ing on specific U.S. partners. According to retired Secretary of Defense and Marine General James Mattis, “Saab correctly diagnoses the problems of security cooperation on both our end and that of our Arab partners and provides bold yet applicable solutions.” Bilal Y. Saab is a senior fellow and director of the Defense and Security Program at the Middle East Institute. Saab served as senior adviser for security cooperation in the Pentagon’s Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, with oversight responsibilities for U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). History, Disrupted: How Social Media and the World Wide Web Have Changed the Past Jason Steinhauer, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, $27.99/paperback, e-book available, 168 pages. History is a critical source of context and continuity in shaping the identi- ties and policies of nations. It serves an important purpose in how they understand themselves. Access to objective history is essential for having engaged and informed citizens, and a democracy. The growth of social media and the internet has reshaped how history is captured, told, and distorted, and can lay the foundations for political strife and destabilize civil society through misinforma- tion. As Jason Steinhauer argues, we must better grasp how these technologies shape our understanding of the past—and what that can mean for our future. Jason Steinhauer, a global fellow at the Wilson Center, was the founding director of the Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest at Villanova University. He is the founder of the History Communication Institute and the creator of the field of history communication, which examines history on the web. The Shortest History of the Soviet Union Sheila Fitzpatrick, Columbia University Press, 2022, $25/ paperback, e-book available, 256 pages. The rise and fall of the Soviet Union were characterized by the ascendance of the world’s first communist state, victory in total war, and worldwide geopolitical competition that ended in