Audiobooks by Robert D. Kaplan

What You're Really Meant To Do: A Road Map for Reaching Your Unique Potential

How do you create your own definition of success-and reach your unique potential? Building a fulfilling life and career can be a daunting challenge. It takes courage and hard work. Too often, we charge down a path leading to "success" as defined by those around us-and ultimately, are left feeling dissatisfied. Each of us is unique and brings distinctive skills and qualities to any situation. So why is it that most of us fail to spend sufficient time learning to understand ourselves and creating our own definition of success? The truth is, it can seem so natural and so much easier to just do what everyone else is doing-for now-leaving it for later to develop our best selves and figure out our own unique path. Is there a road map that will enable you to defy conventional wisdom, resist peer pressure, and carve out a path that fits your unique skills and passions? Harvard Business School's Robert Steven Kaplan, leadership expert and author of the highly successful book What to Ask the Person in the Mirror, regularly advises executives and students on how to tackle these questions. In this indispensable new audiobook, Kaplan shares a specific and actionable approach to defining your own success and reaching your potential. Drawing on his years of experience, Kaplan proposes an integrated plan for identifying and achieving your goals. He outlines specific steps and exercises to help you understand yourself more deeply, take control of your career, and build your capabilities in a way that fits your passions and aspirations. Are you doing what you're really meant to do? If you're ready to face this question, this audiobook can help you change your life.

Robert D. Kaplan, Robert Steven Kaplan (Author), Wes Talbot (Narrator)

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The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power

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.

Robert D. Kaplan (Author), John Chancer (Narrator)

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The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate

In this provocative, startling book, Robert D. Kaplan, the bestselling author of Monsoon and Balkan Ghosts, offers a revelatory new prism through which to view global upheavals and to understand what lies ahead for continents and countries around the world. In The Revenge of Geography, Robert D. Kaplan 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. Kaplan traces the history of the world's hot spots by examining their climates, topographies, and proximities to other embattled lands. The Russian steppe's pitiless climate and limited vegetation bred hard and cruel men bent on destruction, for example, while Nazi geopoliticians distorted geopolitics entirely, calculating that space on the globe used by the British Empire and the Soviet Union could be swallowed by a greater German homeland. Kaplan then applies the lessons learned to the present crises in Europe, Russia, China, the Indian subcontinent, Turkey, Iran, and the Arab Middle East. The result is a holistic interpretation of the next cycle of conflict throughout Eurasia. Remarkably, the future can be understood in the context of temperature, land allotment, and other physical certainties: China, able to feed only twenty-three percent of its people from land that is only seven percent arable, has sought energy, minerals, and metals from such brutal regimes as Burma, Iran, and Zimbabwe, putting it in moral conflict with the United States. Afghanistan's porous borders will keep it the principal invasion route into India, and a vital rear base for Pakistan, India's main enemy. Iran will exploit the advantage of being the only country that straddles both energy-producing areas of the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. Finally, Kaplan posits that the United States might rue engaging in far-flung conflicts with Iraq and Afghanistan rather than tending to its direct neighbor Mexico, which is on the verge of becoming a semifailed state due to drug cartel carnage. A brilliant rebuttal to thinkers who suggest that globalism will trump geography, this indispensable work shows how timeless truths and natural facts can help prevent this century's looming cataclysms.

Robert D. Kaplan (Author), Michael Prichard (Narrator)

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The Return of Marco Polo's World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-first Century

A bracing assessment of U.S. foreign policy and world disorder over the past two decades, anchored by a major new Pentagon-commissioned essay about changing power dynamics among China, Eurasia, and America-from the renowned geopolitical analyst and bestselling author of The Revenge of Geography and The Coming Anarchy. In the late thirteenth century, Marco Polo began a decades-long trek from Venice to China. The strength of that Silk Road-the trade route between Europe and Asia-was a foundation of Kublai Khan's sprawling empire. Now, in the early twenty-first century, the Chinese regime has proposed a land-and-maritime Silk Road that duplicates exactly the route Marco Polo traveled. In the major lead essay, recently released by the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, Robert D. Kaplan lays out a blueprint of the world's changing power politics that recalls the late thirteenth century. As Europe fractures from changes in culture and migration, Eurasia coheres into a single conflict system. China is constructing a land bridge to Europe. Iran and India are trying to link the oil fields of Central Asia to the Indian Ocean. America's ability to influence the power balance in Eurasia is declining. This is Kaplan's first collection of essays since his classic The Coming Anarchy was published in 2000. Drawing on decades of firsthand experience as a foreign correspondent and military embed for The Atlantic, as well as encounters with preeminent realist thinkers, Kaplan outlines the timeless principles that should shape America's role in a turbulent world: a respect for the limits of Western-style democracy; a delineation between American interests and American values; an awareness of the psychological toll of warfare; a projection of power via a strong navy; and more. From Kaplan's immediate thoughts on President Trump ("On Foreign Policy, Donald Trump Is No Realist," 2016) to a frank examination of what will happen in the event of war with North Korea ("When North Korea Falls," 2006), The Return of Marco Polo's World is a vigorous and honest reckoning with the difficult choices the United States will face in the years ahead.

Robert D. Kaplan (Author), Eric Jason Martin, Eric Martin (Narrator)

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The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China

A stunning exploration of the Greater Middle East, where lasting stability has often seemed just out of reach but may hold the key to the shifting world order of the twenty-first century "Continuing Robert D. Kaplan's work as the premier American scholar of geopolitics . . . a book that everyone who wants to understand the real forces that decide war and peace should read."-John Gray, author of The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism The Greater Middle East, which Robert D. Kaplan defines as the vast region between the Mediterranean and China, encompassing much of the Arab world, parts of northern Africa, and Asia, existed for millennia as the crossroads of empire: Macedonian, Roman, Persian, Mongol, Ottoman, British, Soviet, American. But with the dissolution of empires in the twentieth century, postcolonial states have endeavored to maintain stability in the face of power struggles between factions, leadership vacuums, and the arbitrary borders drawn by exiting imperial rulers with little regard for geography or political groups on the ground. In the Loom of Time, Kaplan explores this broad, fraught space through reporting and travel writing to reveal deeper truths about the impacts of history on the present and how the requirements of stability over anarchy are often in conflict with the ideals of democratic governance. In The Loom of Time, Kaplan makes the case for realism as an approach to the Greater Middle East. Just as Western attempts at democracy promotion across the Middle East have failed, a new form of economic imperialism is emerging today as China's ambitions fall squarely within the region as the key link between Europe and East Asia. As in the past, the Greater Middle East will be a register of future great power struggles across the globe. And like in the past, thousands of years of imperial rule will continue to cast a long shadow on politics as it is practiced today. To piece together the history of this remarkable place and what it suggests for the future, Kaplan weaves together classic texts, immersive travel writing, and a great variety of voices from every country that all compel the reader to look closely at the realities on the ground and to prioritize these facts over ideals on paper. The Loom of Time is a challenging, clear-eyed book that promises to reframe our vision of the global twenty-first century.

Robert D. Kaplan (Author), Eric Jason Martin (Narrator)

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The Good American: The Epic Life of Bob Gersony, the U.S. Government's Greatest Humanitarian

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Revenge of Geography comes a sweeping yet intimate story of the most influential humanitarian you've never heard of-Bob Gersony, who spent four decades in crisis zones around the world. "For anyone who has stopped believing that one person can make a difference, or that government service is still a noble calling, or that facts still matter, or that the American brand can still hold fast to practical idealism, this book is the antidote to those fears."-Jim Mattis, general, U.S. Marines (ret.), and former secretary of defense, author of Call Sign Chaos In his long career as an acclaimed journalist covering the "hot" moments of the Cold War and its aftermath, bestselling author 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. In Thailand, Central and South America, Sudan, Chad, Mozambique, Rwanda, Gaza, Bosnia, North Korea, Iraq, and beyond, Gersony never flinched from entering dangerous areas that diplomats could not reach, sometimes risking his own life. Gersony's behind-the scenes fact-finding, which included interviews with hundreds of refugees and displaced persons from each war zone and natural-disaster area, often challenged the assumptions and received wisdom of the powers that be, on both the left and the right. In nearly every case, his advice and recommendations made American policy at once smarter and more humane-often dramatically so. In Gersony, Kaplan saw a powerful example of how American diplomacy should be conducted. In a work that exhibits Kaplan's signature talent for combining travel and geography with sharp political analysis, The Good American tells Gersony's powerful life story. Set during the State Department's golden age, this is a story about the loneliness, sweat, and tears and the genuine courage that characterized Gersony's work in far-flung places. It is also a celebration of ground-level reporting: a page-turning demonstration, by one of our finest geopolitical thinkers, of how getting an up-close, worm's-eye view of crises and applying sound reason can elicit world-changing results.

Robert D. Kaplan (Author), Eric Jason Martin (Narrator)

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Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power

On the world maps common in America, the Western Hemisphere lies front and center, while the Indian Ocean region all but disappears. This convention reveals the geopolitical focus of the now-departed twentieth century, but in the twenty-first century that focus will fundamentally change. In this pivotal examination of the countries known as "Monsoon Asia"—which include India, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, Burma, Oman, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Tanzania—bestselling author Robert D. Kaplan shows how crucial this dynamic area has become to American power. It is here that the fight for democracy, energy independence, and religious freedom will be lost or won, and it is here that American foreign policy must concentrate if the United States is to remain relevant in an ever-changing world. From the Horn of Africa to the Indonesian archipelago and beyond, Kaplan exposes the effects of population growth, climate change, and extremist politics on this unstable region, demonstrating why Americans can no longer afford to ignore this important area of the world.

Robert D. Kaplan (Author), John Pruden (Narrator)

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In Europe's Shadow: Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-Years Journey Through Romania and Beyond

Robert Kaplan first visited Romania in the 1970s, when he was a young journalist and Romania was a Communist backwater where "history had virtually stopped" since World War II. In Bucharest, Romania's capital, Kaplan discovered that few Westerners were reporting on the country-one of the darkest corners of Europe during the Cold War. In an intense and cinematic travelogue, Kaplan explores the history and culture of the only country in the West where the leading intellectuals have been right-wing, rather than left-wing; a country that gave rise to the dictator Ion Antonescu, Hitler's chief foreign accomplice during WWII; a country where the Latin West mixes with the Greek East, producing a fascinating fusion of cultures. In Europe's Shadow is a deep and vivid immersion into one place, a country that is a metaphor for Europe's current challenge in confronting Vladimir Putin's Russia. With the brilliant, insightful Kaplan as our narrator and eyewitness, this book is a shorthand masterpiece about imperialism and a country critical to our understanding of the last century in Europe. Robert D. Kaplan is the author of 16 books on foreign affairs and travel translated into many languages, including the The Revenge Of Geography; Monsoon; Balkan Ghosts; and Warrior Politics. He has been a foreign correspondent for The Atlantic for over three decades. In 2011, Foreign Policy magazine named Kaplan among the world's "100 Top Global Thinkers."

Robert D. Kaplan (Author), Paul Boehmer (Narrator)

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Imperial Grunts: On the Ground with the American Military, from Mongolia to the Philippines to Iraq

In this landmark book, Robert D. Kaplan, veteran correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly and author of Balkan Ghosts, shows how American imperialism and the Global War on Terrorism are implemented on the ground, mission by mission, in the most exotic landscapes around the world. Given unprecedented access, Kaplan takes us from the jungles of the southern Philippines to the glacial dust bowls of Mongolia, from the forts of Afghanistan to the forests of South America not to mention Iraq to show us Army Special Forces, Marines, and other uniformed Americans carrying out the many facets of U.S. foreign policy: negotiating with tribal factions, storming terrorist redoubts, performing humanitarian missions and training foreign soldiers. In Imperial Grunts, Kaplan provides an unforgettable insider's account not only of our current involvement in world affairs, but also of where America, including the culture of its officers and enlisted men, is headed. This is the rare book that has the potential to change the way readers view the men and women of the military, war, and the global reach of American imperialism today.As Kaplan writes, the only way to understand America's military is on foot, or in a Humvee, with the troops themselves, for even as elites in New York and Washington debated imperialism in grand, historical terms, individual marines, soldiers, airmen, and sailors all the cultural repositories of America's unique experience with freedom were interpreting policy on their own, on the ground, in dozens upon dozens of countries every week, oblivious to such faraway discussions. . . . It was their stories I wanted to tell: from the ground up, at the point of contact.Never before has America's overarching military strategy been parsed so incisively and evocatively. Kaplan introduces us to lone American servicemen whose presence in obscure countries is largely unknown, and concludes with a heart-stopping portrait of marines in the first battle in Fallujah. Extraordinary in its scope, beautifully written, Imperial Grunts, the first of two volumes, combines first-rate reporting with the sensitivity and insights of an acclaimed writer steeped in history, literature, and philosophy, to deliver a masterly account of America's global role in the twenty-first century. • Imperial Grunts paints a vivid picture of how defense policy is implemented at the grassroots level.• Kaplan travels throughout the world where U.S. forces are located. This is not just a book about Iraq or Afghanistan. • Rather than debate imperialism, Kaplan relies on a keen understanding of history, philosophy, and in-the-field reporting to show how it actually works on the ground.• Imperial Grunts escapes Washington and shows us what it's like to live with the grunts day to day.Praise for Imperial GruntsOne of the most important books of the last several years. Robert Kaplan uses his prodigious energy and matchless reporting skills to takes us on to the front lines with the new warrior-diplomats who use weapons, imagination, and personal passion to protect and advance the interests of the United States. This is a generation every American should come to know. Tom BrokawRobert Kaplan has brilliantly captured the story of today's U.S. military operating in far-flung places on strange missions. Imperial Grunts is the most insightful and superbly written account of soldiering in the New World Disorder to date. It is a must read for all Americans. General Anthony C. Zinni, United States Marine Corps (Ret.)Kaplan infuses us with a sense of hope about the future. Through astonishing observations, truths, and stories, Imperial Grunts introduces a brand-new way of thinking about the enduring virtue of the American spirit. George Crile, author of Charlie Wilson's WarNo recent book so well or so vividly portrays the challenges of the modern United States military. With an impressive grasp of the complexities of military missions worldwide, Robert Kaplan exposes the reader to the world of the modern soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine. A must read for both civilian and military leaders. General Barry R. McCaffrey, United States Army (Ret.), Bradley Distinguished Professor of International Security Studies, United States Military AcademyImperial Grunts is vintage Robert Kaplan, combining a deep appreciation of history and wonderfully vivid writing with an infectious wanderlust. Max Boot, Senior Fellow, National Security Studies, the Council on Foreign Relations, author of The Savage Wars of PeaceSplendid! This is the finest work in print about today's American fighting men and the challenges they face around the globe. Kaplan's courage in researching this book under combat conditions is complemented by his integrity and great literary skill. Imperial Grunts simply could not be better. Ralph Peters, author of Beyond Baghdad

Robert D. Kaplan (Author), John H. Mayer (Narrator)

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Imperial Grunts

Robert D. Kaplan (Author), Scott Brick (Narrator)

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Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts

In this extraordinary audiobook, Robert D. Kaplan lets listeners experience up close the American military worldwide in the air, at sea, and on the ground. HOG PILOTS, BLUE WATER GRUNTS provides not only a ground-level portrait of the Global War on Terrorism on several continents, but also a gritty firsthand account of how U.S. soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen are protecting sea-lanes, providing disaster relief, contending with the military rise of China, fighting the war in Iraq, and crafting contingency plans for war with North Korea and Iran. Expanding on Kaplan's acclaimed Imperial Grunts, HOG PILOTS, BLUE WATER GRUNTS shifts focus to the Pacific and completes his analysis of army Special Forces and the marines, while also taking listeners into the heart of the myriad tribal cultures of the air force, surface and subsurface navies, and the regular army's Stryker brigades. Kaplan goes deep into their highly technical and exotic worlds, and he tells this story through the words and perspectives of the enlisted personnel and junior officers themselves. This provocative and illuminating audiobook not only conveys the vast scope of America's military commitments, but also shows us astonishing and vital operations right as they unfold-from the point of view of the troops themselves.

Robert D. Kaplan (Author), Don Leslie (Narrator)

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Fear Your Strengths: What You Are Best at Could Be Your Biggest Problem

Once you've discovered your strengths, you need to discover something else: your strengths can work against you. Many leaders know this on some intuitive level, and they see it in others. But they don't see it as clearly in themselves. Mainly, they think of leadership development as working on their weaknesses. No wonder. The tools used to assess managers are not equipped to pick up on overplayed strengths-when more is not better. Nationally recognized leadership experts Bob Kaplan and Rob Kaiser have conducted thousands of assessments of senior executives designed to determine when their strengths serve them well-versus betray them. In this groundbreaking audiobook, they draw on their data and practical experience to identify four fundamental leadership qualities, each positive in and of itself but each of which, if overemphasized, can seriously compromise your effectiveness. Most leaders, they've found, are "lopsided"-they favor certain qualities to the exclusion of others without realizing it. The trick is to keep all four in balance. Fear Your Strengths provides tools to help you become aware of your leadership leanings and excesses and provides insights for combatting the mindset that encourages them. It offers a practical psychology of leadership, a better way for leaders to calibrate their performance so that you can make sure your strengths don't overpower you but rather move you-and your organization-forward.

Robert B. Kaiser, Robert D. Kaplan, Robert E. Kaplan (Author), Derek Shetterley, Derek Shetterly (Narrator)

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