The Tragic Mind, Robert D. Kaplan
The Tragic Mind, Robert D. Kaplan
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The Tragic Mind
Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power

Author: Robert D. Kaplan

Narrator: John Chancer

Unabridged: 3 hr 59 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/17/2023

Synopsis

A moving meditation on recent geopolitical crises, viewed through the lens of ancient and modern tragedy
Some books emerge from a lifetime of hard-won knowledge. Robert D. Kaplan has learned, from a career spent reporting on wars, revolutions, and international politics in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia, that the essence of geopolitics is tragedy. In The Tragic Mind, he employs the works of ancient Greek dramatists, Shakespeare, German philosophers, and the modern classics to explore the central subjects of international politics: order, disorder, rebellion, ambition, loyalty to family and state, violence, and the mistakes of power. The great dilemmas of international politics, he argues, are not posed by good versus evil—a clear and easy choice—but by contests of good versus good, where the choices are often searing, incompatible, and fraught with consequences. A deeply learned and deeply felt meditation on the importance of lived experience in conducting international relations, this is a book for everyone who wants a profound understanding of the tragic politics of our time.

About Robert D. Kaplan

Robert D. Kaplan is the author of over a dozen books on foreign affairs and travel, including Balkan Ghosts, Eastward to Tartary, and Warrior Politics. He is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington and a national correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly, and was recently the distinguished visiting professor in national security at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. Robert is a member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board.

Reviews

Goodreads review by David on January 08, 2023

Robert Kaplan is renowned for his keen insight in covering foreign wars and the politics associated with them. Unusually for a journalist, he has had the ear of past American administrations. Such is his reputation and credibility. How strange then, that his latest book, The Tragic Mind, is entirely......more

Goodreads review by Julian on April 11, 2025

Tragedy is not despair but comprehension, an understanding that to think tragically is to know that all things can't be fixed, even as life must go on. The Ancient Greeks knew that they had to accept much of the world just as it was, as it came to them, as they encountered it. Robert D Kaplan draws o......more

Goodreads review by Steve on January 20, 2023

This latest release (17 Jan. 2023) from Robert D. Kaplan arises from his experiences as a foreign reporter, war correspondent, and influential voice in American foreign affairs. Indeed, it’s perhaps this latter role that provided the most proximate motivation for these reflections. Kaplan notes here......more

Goodreads review by Seb5253 on November 18, 2023

As a proponent of right wing pro Iraq war policies as well as influencing decision makers into delaying actions in the Balkans (hastening and perhaps allowing for the furtherance of mass murder), there's something a little disingenuous about an author profiting from a book that to me, came across as......more

Goodreads review by George on January 25, 2023

A new book by a favorite author is always a pleasant prospect. Robert D. Kaplan does not disappoint in "The Tragic Mind." He is an erudite writer who has read, understood, and felt his way through a varied library of sources. This book confirms his eminence as a thinker and as a scholar as he draws......more

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