This week's new books

Journalism’s Roving Eye, John Maxwell Hamilton (Louisiana State University Press)
This history of American foreign news reporting, from its inception to the present day, chronicles the economic and technological advances that have influenced overseas coverage, as well as the personalities who shaped readers’ perceptions of the world across two centuries.


In Defence of the Enlightenment, Tzvetan Todorov (Atlantic Books)
In this analysis of the heritage of the Enlightenment, Todorov defends the role of the Enlightenment as the philosophical cornerstone of the modern world and argues that the wisdom of the Enlightenment thinkers is as relevant today as it was in the 18th century.


Covert Action in the Cold War, James Callanan (I.B. Tauris)
Drawing on unpublished government records and documents, Callanan charts the growth of the CIA’s covert action arm, created to counter the challenge posed by the Soviet Union and its allies and to bolster American interests worldwide.


Cracking the Einstein Code, Fulvio Melia (University of Chicago Press)
An account of the events leading up to Roy Kerr’s cracking of the Einstein code, in 1963, forty years after the publication of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.