Arms and Influence

By: Thomas C. Schelling, Anne-Marie Slaughter - introduction

Narrated by: Rick Adamson

Originally published more than fifty years ago, this landmark book explores the ways in which military capabilities—real or imagined—are used, skillfully or clumsily, as bargaining power. Anne-Marie Slaughter's new introduction to the work shows how Schelling's framework—conceived of in a time of superpowers and mutually assured destruction—still applies to our multipolar world, where wars are fought as much online as on the ground.

©1966 Yale University; Preface copyright 2008 by Yale University; Introduction copyright 2020 by Anne-Marie Slaughter (P)2023 Tantor

Excellent Narration of a classic tome

Adamson’s reading of Thomas Schelling’s landmark work made for the most engaging and digestible listening experiences I’ve had in years.

Audio cutting errors?

There is no need for me to review the book itself, as to do so would diminish it by the implication it needed such praise, from some random person on the internet. Instead: Rick Adamson's measured pace, smooth tone, and capacity to express the wry amusement inherent to nuclear strategy make him perfect as narrator for Arms and Influence. (I would not be able to read, "[W]hen somebody flies U-2 planes over your missile sites, why not kidnap a few of his ballerinas?" better than he.)

It's just—there are multiple places in which whoever was cutting the audio messed up, and included more than one take of Adamson reciting a line (you can tell that's what it is, and that it's not just some kind of download error, because his delivery is clearly different in each instance of the repeated line). You'd think that Tantor Audio would do better than that.