Boston Book Festival 2017

person to discuss the current geopolitical situation. Former director of Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Graham Allison poses the question: is war between America and China inevitable? In Destined for War: Can American and China Escape Thucydide’s Trap? Allison argues that it will take some doing to avoid a centuries-old pattern in which an established power is challenged by a rising power, and war ensues. Meghan O’Sullivan, professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and director of the Geopolitics of Energy Project, analyzes how energy markets shape politics and predicts that a new age of energy abundance will have an enormous impact on strategic alliances and power in her new book, Windfall: How the New Energy Abundance Upends Global Politics and Strengthens America’s Power. Nicholas Burns, whose lengthy resume includes his current position as professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and founder and director of the Future of Diplomacy Project, as well as his previous career in the Foreign Service as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and US Ambassador to NATO, will moderate an exciting and important conversation on the state of the world.