ISA Publisher Spotlight: Cambria Press
Cambria Press is honored to be the publisher selected by the International Studies Association (ISA) for its inaugural ISA Publisher Spotlight. We are proud to highlight the Cambria Rapid Communications in Conflict and Security (RCCS) Series, a series created for when the argument can’t wait.
When the Argument Can’t Wait
In international security, consequential developments can move rapidly. Wars alter strategic assumptions, technologies generate new questions, and policy debates evolve while scholars and practitioners assess their implications.
The Cambria RCCS series is designed to bring substantive scholarship on pressing questions into contemporary debate.
Combining timely publication with in-depth analysis and high production values, the Cambria RCCS series covers subjects ranging from diplomacy to interstate and intrastate conflict. Its books connect contemporary problems with their theoretical and historical contexts and consider their implications for policy and practice.
Watch: Discover the Cambria Rapid Communications in Conflict and Security Series.
Bringing Theory into Practice
The Cambria RCCS series welcomes varied theoretical perspectives and disciplinary approaches. Its authors bring experience from academic, policy, governmental, military, and other professional settings. This breadth connects scholarship and practice, historical inquiry and contemporary strategy, and conceptual innovation with professional experience. Books in the Cambria RCCS series are peer reviewed and professionally edited and produced.
The series is headed by general editor Dr. Thomas G. Mahnken, president and CEO of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and senior research professor at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins SAIS.
The founding editor is Dr. Geoffrey R. H. Burn, a former army officer with a doctorate in organization theory and strategy and thirty years of experience as the chief executive of book and journal publishing companies. He served as general editor for eight years and remains on the advisory board.
The series is supported by a distinguished advisory board that brings together scholars and practitioners with expertise spanning academia, government, and the military. View the complete RCCS series advisory board.
From Enduring Questions to Emerging Forms of Conflict
The growing list of the Cambria RCCS series addresses deterrence, proxy warfare, military doctrine, coercive diplomacy, irregular warfare, civil-military relations, information competition, regional security, and the changing character of conflict. Books in the series have received national awards.
Rose Gottemoeller’s Negotiating the New START Treaty, the chief US negotiator’s firsthand account of the negotiations with Russia and the effort to secure Senate ratification, received the 2021 Douglas Dillon Award for a Book of Distinction on the Practice of American Diplomacy.
Rebecca Patterson, Susan Bryant, Ken Gleiman, and Mark Troutman’s Winning Without Fighting: Irregular Warfare and Strategic Competition in the 21st Century received the 2025 Army Strategist Association Book Award. It examines how states employ military, political, economic, and informational instruments below the threshold of armed conflict. A ten-week teaching syllabus is also available.
Recent and forthcoming additions reflect the range of questions being examined across the series:
- Jessica C. Caddell’s Institutionalizing Cognitive Warfare: Strategy, Organization, and National Power examines how states seek to transform cognitive-warfare capabilities into enduring instruments of national power, with comparative case studies of Russia, Ukraine, China, and the United States.
- Sonya Finley’s Information Statecraft: Persuasion as Power in the Competition of Ideas develops a framework for understanding persuasion as an instrument of statecraft and explores its relationship to diplomatic, economic, and military power.
- Liam Collins and John Spencer’s The War for Karabakh: Strategy, Technology, and Victory presents an operational history based on extensive source material and interviews with more than one hundred commanders, officials, and veterans from Azerbaijan and Armenia.
- Curtis McGiffin and Adam Lowther’s Learning to Love the Bomb: Understanding the American Nuclear Arsenal provides an accessible introduction to the US nuclear arsenal and contemporary debates about deterrence.
- Andrew L. Peek’s War Without Footprints: Plausible Deniability and the Future of Proxy Warfare examines plausible deniability and the strategic use of proxy forces through cases involving Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.
Across these subjects, books in the Cambria RCCS series provide frameworks, evidence, historical perspective, and arguments intended to support further research, teaching, discussion, and professional reflection.
For the ISA Community
For instructors: Those considering Cambria RCCS series titles for courses may request examination copies directly from individual title pages. Many published titles are available in hardcover, paperback, and digital editions, with short-term rental options offered for selected books.
For journal reviewers: Journal review copies may also be requested from individual title pages.
For authors and prospective collaborators: The Cambria RCCS series welcomes proposals from scholars and practitioners whose research can contribute to both intellectual debate and professional understanding. Cambria also welcomes opportunities to work with scholars, institutions, educators, and professional communities.
By connecting timely questions with substantive research, the Cambria RCCS series helps important arguments enter scholarly, classroom, policy, and professional discussions while those discussions are still taking shape.
Explore the Cambria RCCS series, preview available books, request an examination or review copy, or find a title for your next course: