Doris Kearns Goodwin is a first-class American presidential historian. Her new book, Leadership: Lessons from the Presidents for Turbulent Times, could not be better timed. American voters went to the polls this...

In the terminal phase of Richard Nixon’s presidency, in the American summer of 1974, defence secretary James Schlesinger worried that Nixon’s mental decline would lead to a nuclear incident. By this point, secretary...

After Donald Trump was inaugurated, Washington speculated: Might we see from Bob Woodward, given the volcanic eruption of power and chaos that engulfed Trump from the moment he took the oath of office...

Stephen Loosley reviews Pulitzer prize-­winning historian Jon Meacham's new book, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels.

USSC lecturer in American studies Dr Rodney Taveira authored the chapter The Divine Violence of Underworld USA in the book The Big Somewhere: Essays on James Ellroy's Noir World.

James Ellroy's identity as...

Arizona Republican John McCain is among the most powerful people to have occupied a US Senate seat. An undoubted war hero ­(despite the trashing of his reputation by Donald Trump) who suffered mightily...

On the evening of the first day of the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862, the Union forces at Pittsburgh Landing reflected the partial rout that had been suffered. As reinforcements were ferried...

Earlier this year, I reviewed Michael Wolff’s sensational, lacerating book on the Trump ­administration, Fire and Fury. Some claimed the book would bring down Donald Trump. It did not, of course. It has...

USSC visiting fellow Stephen Loosley reviews Michael Wolff's book Fire and Fury for The Australian. Loosley writes that Wolff's account of the first year of the presidency is lightweight but engaging.

In the latest edition of the Security Challenges journal, USSC research fellow Dougal Robinson describes how relations between the United States and Australia have stabilised after the infamous Trump-Turnbull phone call in January...

The state institutions portrayed in the HBO crime procedural True Detective are innately and structurally corrupt. Local mayors’, state governors’, and district attorneys’ offices, city and county police, and sheriff’s departments commit and...

Jeremi Suri’s The Impossible Presidency grounds contemporary debates about the presidency in a historical understanding of the office — and shows why its recent occupants don’t measure up.

This is a moving book in which the defeated­ Democrat, Hillary Rodham Clinton, muses on the outcome of last year’s US presidential election. It’s about the success of Donald Trump as well as...

Ever since billionaire Donald Trump declared his candidacy for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination in June 2015, politicians (both Democratic and Republican), the media, and the global public have expressed an escalating concern...

In late 2014, a film starring Seth Rogen and James Franco found itself at the center of a political and corporate crisis. The film, entitled The Interview, featured the duo as tabloid journalists recruited...

USSC visiting fellow Stephen Loosley reviews Craig Collie’s book Code Breakers for The Australian.

Centre lecturer Gorana Grgic co-authored (with Benjamin E. Goldsmith, Dimitri Semenovich and Arcot Sowmya) this article published in the journal, World Politics.

In the last years of their existence, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) found themselves facing a similar and very grim state of affairs...

How would we know a good defence strategy if we saw one? The Asian Century is challenging many of the traditional assumptions at the heart of Australian defence policy and strategy. Defence scholars...

Centre lecturer Dr Gorana Grgic reviews Andrew Rojecki's book America and the Politics of Insecurity for The RUSI Journal.