The only addition I'd make (though, admittedly, it is history and not IR) is Michael Burleigh's "The Third Reich: A New History," which is perhaps the funniest, best written serious history book I've ever read.

I think a lot of the style of prose in IR is informed by the environment - as you said, people wish to be "Taken Seriously." Granted, I only have a B.A. in IR, but in my short time amongst political scientists I never met one that didn't have at least a pretty good sense of humor; however, it would never find its way into their writing or public lectures in the same manner. Perhaps in the hope that people besides other political scientists are paying attention to what is written, it's hard to risk being seen as flippant or sarcastic about questions of global importance.

As an example of the effect of environment on prose, your treatment of your own blog, as well as many other blogs, both "professional" and amateur (including my own), let their hair down a little as compared to articles or books. This seems to be because there are less concerns about offending, confusing, or angering the readers.

I am a graduate student from Germany and I just came across your blog a few days ago. I was doing some research and came across several of your scientific articles in journals.. I like the way you approach scientific issues in your writing and for that very reason I did further research to find out more about "this author". Does that qualify to enter you in your own contest?
Another positive aspect of your image as an author is this blog. Who in the IR field is able to write down his thoughts in a blog? I totally understand this is not necessarily your scientific work, but when I browse through your articles I am able to get your general concepts and approach. It matches your realist concepts laid out in your work and yet you manage to apply this to current affairs on a regular basis.

So my nominees are:
1. Stephen M. Walt
2. Jutta Weldes
Whilst I don't necessarily agree with her on many issues, I love the way she deconstructs / denaturalizes things and unlike the experience I have with other constructivists, I am able to talk about her ideas with people who are not familiar with IR theories.
3. John Mearsheimer

Have to go with John Mueller. I find Dan Drezner's blog very entertaining--and the Zombies book was excellent--but Mueller has to get the prize. Read his discussion of dirty bombs in Atomic Obsession and there's no argument.

...but Jonathan Caverley got a great footnote into his dissertation. A passage about security as a public good comprised of labor and capital reads:

"capital and labor are imperfect replacements and show diminishing returns; given a hundred tanks and ten soldiers, adding another tank will not produce as much military power as another soldier. Until it is possible to build
a military made entirely of robots, defense requires some of both factors."

And it links to a footnote that says:

"Even then this is likely to be prohibitively expensive and may very well result in a war between humans and machines programmed to enslave us all, a public bad."

But yes, in general, John Mueller has to be in the top echelon.

Stephen Biddle is simply outstanding. HIs book Military Victory (like his previous works on Iraq, Afghanistan and so forth) gives the reader the feeling of being on the battlefield and observing what happens.

Biddle is clear, direct, elegant and extremely enjoyable. There are a lot of other works that I enjoyed reading (the usual crews: Posen, Rosen, Walt, etc.), but none kept me stick to the book so much.

For giving you the flavor: I read BIddle in vacation, during the summer, after having graduated. I read it in three days, at "chops" of 100 pages each.

No. 1: COLIN GRAY !!!!!!

No. 2: Andrew Hurrell

No. 3: J. J. Mearsheimer

No. 4: Ken Waltz

No. 5: Randy Schweller

1. John Mearsheimer
2. John Mearsheimer
3. John Mearsheimer

Reading Brodie's War and Politics is a delight.

Waltz certainly has his moments, especially in his replies to critics. I also find Colin Wight (They Shoot Dead Horses, Don't They?) and Randal Schweller (Fantasy Theory) very amusing, especially in their interactions with other scholars.

Friedrich Kratochwil also gets away with a lot of witty (albeit high-brow) remarks in his articles.

Stephen Van Evera has a few very good quips in his PhD thesis (one very good remark about knowledge accumulating in social science in there).

Mearsheimer clearly makes an effort to be controversial and acerbic, which sometimes pays off ("for every neck there are two hands to choke it" is a personal favorite).

The same goes for Edward Luttwak (What if Bosnians were Dolphins?).

Overall, I agree with the first poster on the importance of the media on style, but add that some scholars also loosen up a lot when writing book reviews, critiques and replies.

...and not just a joy to read, but a real charmer in person as well.

Freud has a great comment that I quoted in the BA Paper* (U of C) I wrote for you in that scholars are better at destroying each others' work than creating their own.

James Scott is perhaps the most human - and thus perhaps entertaining? - writer I can think of off the top of my head. I enjoyed the passing reference to sex as something that can only be learned through experience in "Seeing."

Regards,
Where Fun Comes to Die

* You were very charitable (in every, and perhaps the truest, sense of the word) to me as an undergrad, including your treatment of my BA Paper.

I know he's technically a journalist by trade, but it's quite arbitrary to exclude him. He's really more of a Historian. His book the Great War for Civilizations will often make you cry, but it has plenty of personal jokes and rants that are quite entertaining

He's rarely acknowledged. But he offers some of the most interesting and entertaining analyses. I would also consider him largely a realist, and he's the only one so far (I know of) that has analyzed the effects of climate change on war and peace. (the most pressing issue in my books)

Firstly in the field of Journalism, there are some entertaining and informative foreign correspondents.

- Robert Fisk: The Great War of Civilisation is a few thousand page long EPIC of a book about Fisk's assignments in the Middle East. Starting off with him leaving Belfast as a young reporter to cover Afghanistan during the Soviet Invasion, living in Lebanon during the Civil War, Interviewing Bin Laden several times, in the front trenches during the Iran-Iraq war, walking through Sabra and Chatilla 30 minutes after the massacre ended all the way up to his accounts from Baghdad during Shock and Awe and almost being killed by a mob in Afghanistan in 2002. A book that blends the great conflicts in geopolitics in the last 30 years with the on-the-ground tales of a who man who covers these hotspots.

- Pepe Escobar: Lets face it covering wars and the Middle East is a fairly grim task at times but Pepe Escobars style of writing probably makes him the Hunter S Thompson of war reporting. Always interesting geopolitical insights mixed with a fairly casual tongue in cheek tone.

Next regarding Scholars it is probably harder and duller.

- R.R Palmer (Professor of History at Yale) during the 1960's. Had a great storytelling ability with regards to history. His book, 12 Who Ruled, on the French Revolution is stunning in that it brings the characters out and really gives you a feel for the choas of revolutionary France.

- Prof Abu Assad Khalil (AKA AngryArab) his blog is just priceless. Witty, searing, and informative.

I just discovered that Stanley Hoffmann is still alive. I am not going to describe my reaction because it will be perceived as maudlin and unbecoming of someone as old as me, but I will say that I truly believed that God made him write certain words which I read last year in the American Enterprise Institute's "Detente and Defense: A reader" (ed. Robert J. Pranger). Before I go on I will say that sadly the present AEI is not "your daddy's AEI," but maybe this will change soon.

I am going to quote a long paragraph that both amused me and truly lifted my spirits last year because of things I had written about national and global economy policy a year to a year and a half earlier and which I believed would be an answer to the Gordian Knot of problems humankind is facing. The global economy model/policy is referred to as an invention pipeline economy and is based on a novel approach for very advanced technology R&D and the sharing of the fruits of that R&D with private industry and other countries in order to raise and equalize the standard of living worldwide and eliminate militarism and most or all forms of undesirable competition. I have shared my thoughts with Dr. David Drezner, Lord Skidelsky, who has most probably written the definitive biography of John Maynard Keynes and a few others.

Anyway, here is the quote that may one day (hopefully soon) be regarded as being both the most moving and amusing thing anyone has written:

"The policy differences become most acute in regard to the "linkage" between security and other interests. Classical partisans of Realpolitik see nothing wrong in using the security relationship as a lever, in order to gain concessions or redress their country's weaknesses on the other chessboards. The "modern" school tends to favor trade-offs or linkages between economic chessboards (again, as in the theory -- and occasionally the practice -- of European integration); but it excommunicates any attempt at bringing the blackmail tactics of the security realm into the other "issue-areas." Here, one can best observe the choice of conceptions is not merely an analytic, but also partly a normative, choice. The classicists say the fact that, since the essence of international politics is untransformed, to behave as if the essence had changed or were changing is foolish. This may be true but leaves no other alternative for the future other than the eternal return of the past. The modernes tell us that we ought to take advantage of those forces of change that make old divisions, contests, and concepts obsolete. This is indeed desirable except if it implies that one should act as if the millennium had arrived. There is no more difficult yet necessary intellectual problem than to try to arrive, not at a choice between the two alternatives, but at a synthesis -- especially between the hard realism of one and the implicit idealism of the other." (pp. 80-81)

My thoughts on an "invention pipeline economy" are that synthesis and hopefully, one day soon, they will become more widely known.

Imagined Communities is beautifully written, and again, perhaps more "human" - if not necessarily more witty - than its peers.

James Scott and Ben Anderson - two SE Asianists. Maybe there's a trend to be observed or a cause at play.

I would nominate Henry Kissinger for his wit as an IR "scholar-practitioner," though perhaps more in terms of his off-the-cuff spoken remarks than his scholarly writings as such.

John Mueller definitely gets first place. "Atomic Obsession" is a great example. Not only is his classic wittiness prevalent throughout the book, but so too is his willingness to make wild, nonsensical arguments that border on being irresponsible, such as pooh-poohing the role of nuclear weapons in contributing to the stability of the post-WWII world order! Love John Mueller.

Waltz definitely takes second place. His "Realism and International Politics" collection of essays is a case in point.

And let us not forget Richard K. Betts, famed author of "Not With My Thucydides You Don't." In Betts you get wittiness, but so too do you get an unparalleled literary attitude suggestive of a man with an unmatched Realist gait.

Kenneth N. Waltz - I thoroughly agree that he has a way with words. He seems to have a litany of clever metaphors for getting a point across that really illuminate concepts and lead to much mental stimulation. It's also a treat to watch him pick apart others' arguments. Watching him demolish the "image" approaches in Man, the State and War and the "systemic" approaches in Theory of International Politics really made me love IR and Waltz.

Dan Drezner - Come on, he wrote a book on IR and zombies. Very entertaining. I'm in the midst of attempting in any way possible to cite that work in my IR master's dissertation.

Michael Cox - He's a very amusing lecturer (he's one of my professor's here a the LSE) and this is reflected in his writings. I don't enjoy how he has trouble making a very fixed point and being firm on theory, but has delightful little digs at people in his articles and uses cheeky British vocab that makes me giggle.

I agree with your pick of Schelling - I enjoy his writing style.

The one to add was Dale Copland - I particularly enjoy reading his writings and he is fun to hear in lecture.

Waltz has a nice line about not being able to stop marijuana smuggling across the border in "Nuclear Myths," I think.

From Blainey's Causes of War:

"One reason why an army could rarely pursue a retreating enemy was fear that part of the victorious army might not only reach the enemy but run past them." (on 18th cc warfare)

First of all I would like to say that the topic is just fantastic. "Who are the most entertaining IR scholars? "This is a great question. But on the same difficult to answer because we had and have a lot of great IR scholars..Kenneth N. Waltz, John Mearsheimer etc. But my favorites are Alexander Wendt and Joseph S. Nye jr.. Really good scholars! But it is hard do decide which one is the best. It depends from a lot of factors like very topic. It is for example not easy to say if a Holzspalter is useful and necessary. The modern people would definitely say that an Holzspalter is good and helpful. But the traditionalist would disagree.

Perhaps the most wittiest and charming writer is a blogger out there who goes by the screen name of Great Satan's Girlfriend. Anyone who has ever read her blog understands that, regardless of the sad news (meaning that our foreign policy is a joke within itself) she has an interesting method of telling what's happening with a unique vocabulary most of us aren't used to working with.

So if you're looking for a genuine and very original blogger with and entirely different outlook on the latest news articles that pertain to geopolitics and the like, and a blogger whose vocabulary rivals that of the great Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange) take a peek in at GSGF and you'll see what I mean. This gal has the humour we all need and it's a break from reading the same miserable doldrum ho-hum news.

I'd hope that GSGF ends up with her own column one day and I've also recommended that she one day writes her own book!

Visit:

http://greatsatansgirlfriend.blogspot.com/

You'd be missing out if you don't! This is my nomination!

And, I'd like to add Lauren Jenkins (aka, "The Laurenist") for her melding of foreign policy and naive celebrity charities.

I'd like to second the picks of Bernard Brodie and Colin Gray [who in many ways is Brodie's doppelganger],as well as Richard Betts

Some honorary mentions: even though these are not IR scholars, each wrote frequently about US foreign policy and were a joy to read - John Kenneth Galbraith, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Walter Lippmann and Richard Rovere [sadly, almost totally forgotten, but what a prose stylist].

My favorite internet presence is XiaomingLover1, who has been inactive for most of the last 12 months.

Jane Bussman is not really an IR scholar, but her treatment of the War in Northern Uganda, the impotence of John Prendergast, and the political intrigues of insurgency and peace talks is first rate. And f-cking hilarious.

The book is called "My Worst Date Ever", usu. really hard to find because it defies librarian-labelling.

Jane Bussman is not really an IR scholar, but her treatment of the War in Northern Uganda, the impotence of John Prendergast, and the political intrigues of insurgency and peace talks is first rate. And f-cking hilarious.

The book is called "My Worst Date Ever", usu. really hard to find because it defies librarian-labelling.