International Studies Best Book Award

The award committee unanimously selected Failing to Win: Perceptions of Victory and Defeat in International Politics by Dominic Johnson and Dominic Tierney as the winner of the Annual International Studies 2008 ISA Best Book Award.  Evaluating winners and losers in wars and crises should, in principle, be a straightforward task.  Yet, as the authors show through a detailed analysis of several important cases, military victory "on the ground" is neither necessary nor sufficient for explaining the perception of victory and defeat.  Theirs is a compelling account of the role of pre-existing beliefs, symbolism, and manipulation in interpreting victory and defeat in war, executed with exceptional conceptual clarity, methodological rigor, and utmost elegance. Failing to Win speaks to wide-ranging disciplinary interests in International Studies, from psychology to mass communications, experiments, analysis of polling data, and cultural construction of historical narratives, while providing specific policy recommendations.