The Chris Voss Show Podcast – My Path to Global International Relations: A semi-autobiographical textbook by Dr Vendulka Kubalkova

My Path to Global International Relations: A semi-autobiographical textbook by Dr Vendulka Kubalkova

https://www.amazon.com/Path-Global-International-Relations-semi-autobiographical/dp/B0GJSFG95W

Drvkubalkova.com

My Path to Global International Relations is a semi-autobiographical textbook.

Textbooks are comprehensive compilations of content in a branch of study students learn. Textbooks are produced to meet primarily the needs of educators. They come with ready-made PowerPoints, quizzes, videos, lesson-by-lesson schedules, etc., to facilitate the teacher’s job.

Unlike textbooks but like fiction generally, the autobiographical format of this work is designed primarily with a reader in mind: to be learned in an enjoyable way since it tells a real-life story. It is a story of “study abroad” gone awry at the height of the Cold War. The permission to study abroad in the Communist country came with strings attached: a KGB espionage assignment. The author’s home Prague, and she was only 24 at the time, was occupied by tanks. It became a moral issue for her, and having been blackmailed into accepting the espionage assignment, she blew her cover in England, where she was to study on a British scholarship. It started a lonely path of exile through international relations, statelessness, undocumented, and, for decades, unable to go home. It led to a challenging but successful career as a Professor of International Relations in several countries.

Standard textbooks quickly become out of date, the Preface stresses, the “Globe is in everybody’s living room.” Many stories and animated learning videos are referenced throughout this book and available separately. The chapter’s topics are interdisciplinary with history excursions, the philosophy of knowledge, social sciences, postcolonial studies, and sociology of knowledge (challenges universities face), and it introduces some of her friends and colleagues, the prominent scholars of the field of International Relations.