In Squaring Off, Zócalo invites authors into the public square to answer five questions about the essence of their books. For this round, we pose questions to Georgetown University professor and Council on Foreign Relations foreign policy analyst Charles A. Kupchan, author of No One’s World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn (Oxford University Press).

Kupchan argues that, as Western preeminence slips away, so will the founding principles of Western modernization—liberal democracy, industrial capitalism, and secular nationalism. But this doesn’t mean that China is going to become the new world leader. Instead, we’ll be living in “no one’s world.” …

In Squaring Off, Zócalo invites authors into the public square to answer five questions about the essence of their books. For this round, we pose questions to Oklahoma City University historian James Joseph Buss, author of Winning the West with Words: Language and Conquest in the Lower Great Lakes.

Nineteenth-century Anglo-Americans wiped out many of the Midwest’s Native Americans physically, with guns and disease, and symbolically—by employing language that erased them from the landscape. Winning the West with Words explores how Anglo-Americans rewrote the narrative of their region and how Native Americans have shaped our historical memory. …