International Books

The Post-American World

Fareed Zakaria

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Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> Globalization

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 104 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

One of our most distinguished thinkers argues that the "rise of the rest" is the great story of our time.

"This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else." So begins Fareed Zakaria's important new work on the era we are now entering. Following on the success of his best-selling The Future of Freedom, Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the "rise of the rest"—the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others—as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world. The tallest buildings, biggest dams, largest-selling movies, and most advanced cell phones are all being built outside the United States. This economic growth is producing political confidence, national pride, and potentially international problems. How should the United States understand and thrive in this rapidly changing international climate? What does it mean to live in a truly global era? Zakaria answers these questions with his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination.

The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

Thomas L. Friedman

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Total reviews: 1142 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Updated Edition: Thomas L. Friedman is not so much a futurist, which he is sometimes called, as a presentist. His aim in The World Is Flat, as in his earlier, influential Lexus and the Olive Tree, is not to give you a speculative preview of the wonders that are sure to come in your lifetime, but rather to get you caught up on the wonders that are already here. The world isn't going to be flat, it is flat, which gives Friedman's breathless narrative much of its urgency, and which also saves it from the Epcot-style polyester sheen that futurists--the optimistic ones at least--are inevitably prey to.

What Friedman means by "flat" is "connected": the lowering of trade and political barriers and the exponential technical advances of the digital revolution that have made it possible to do business, or almost anything else, instantaneously with billions of other people across the planet. This in itself should not be news to anyone. But the news that Friedman has to deliver is that just when we stopped paying attention to these developments--when the dot-com bust turned interest away from the business and technology pages and when 9/11 and the Iraq War turned all eyes toward the Middle East--is when they actually began to accelerate. Globalization 3.0, as he calls it, is driven not by major corporations or giant trade organizations like the World Bank, but by individuals: desktop freelancers and innovative startups all over the world (but especially in India and China) who can compete--and win--not just for low-wage manufacturing and information labor but, increasingly, for the highest-end research and design work as well. (He doesn't forget the "mutant supply chains" like Al-Qaeda that let the small act big in more destructive ways.)

Friedman has embraced this flat world in his own work, continuing to report on his story after his book's release and releasing an unprecedented hardcover update of the book a year later with 100 pages of revised and expanded material. What's changed in a year? Some of the sections that opened eyes in the first edition--on China and India, for example, and the global supply chain--are largely unaltered. Instead, Friedman has more to say about what he now calls "uploading," the direct-from-the-bottom creation of culture, knowledge, and innovation through blogging, podcasts, and open-source software. And in response to the pleas of many of his readers about how to survive the new flat world, he makes specific recommendations about the technical and creative training he thinks will be required to compete in the "New Middle" class. As before, Friedman tells his story with the catchy slogans and globe-hopping anecdotes that readers of his earlier books and his New York Times columns know well, and he holds to a stern sort of optimism. He wants to tell you how exciting this new world is, but he also wants you to know you're going to be trampled if you don't keep up with it. A year later, one can sense his rising impatience that our popular culture, and our political leaders, are not helping us keep pace. --Tom Nissley

Where Were You When the World Went Flat?

Thomas L. Friedman's reporter's curiosity and his ability to recognize the patterns behind the most complex global developments have made him one of the most entertaining and authoritative sources for information about the wider world we live in, both as the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times and as the author of landmark books like From Beirut to Jerusalem and The Lexus and the Olive Tree. They also make him an endlessly fascinating conversation partner, and we've now had the chance to talk to him about The World Is Flat twice. Read our original interview with him following the publication of the first edition of The World Is Flat to learn why there's almost no one from Washington, D.C., listed in the index of a book about the global economy, and what his one-plank platform for president would be. (Hint: his bumper stickers would say, "Can You Hear Me Now?")

And now you can listen to our second interview, in which he talks about the updates he's made in "The World Is Flat 2.0," including his response to parents who said to him, "Great, Mr. Friedman, I'm glad you told us the world is flat. Now what do I tell my kids?"

The Essential Tom Friedman

From Beirut to Jerusalem

The Lexus and the Olive Tree

Longitudes and Attitudes

More on Globalization and Development

China, Inc. by Ted Fishman	Three Billion New Capitalists by Clyde Prestowitz	The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs
Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz	The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli	The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto

The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

Ron Suskind

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

From Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Ron Suskind comes a startling look at how America lost its way and at the nation's struggle, day by day, to reclaim the moral authority upon which its survival depends. From the White House to Downing Street, from the fault-line countries of South Asia to the sands of Guantánamo, Suskind offers an astonishing story that connects world leaders to the forces waging today's shadow wars and to the next generation of global citizens. Tracking down truth and hope within the Beltway and far beyond it, Suskind delivers historic disclosures with this emotionally stirring and strikingly original portrait of the post-9/11 world. In a sweeping, propulsive, and multilayered narrative, The Way of the World investigates how America relinquished the moral leadership it now desperately needs to fight the real threat of our era: a nuclear weapon in the hands of terrorists. Truth, justice, and accountability become more than mere words in this story. Suskind shows where the most neglected dangers lie in the story of "The Armageddon Test" —a desperate gamble to send undercover teams into the world's nuclear black market to frustrate the efforts of terrorists trying to procure weapons-grade uranium. In the end, he finally reveals for the first time the explosive falsehood underlying the Iraq War and the entire Bush presidency. While the public and political realms struggle, The Way of the World simultaneously follows an ensemble of characters in America and abroad who are turning fear and frustration into a desperate—and often daring—brand of human salvation. They include a striving, twenty-four-year-old Pakistani émigré, a fearless UN refugee commissioner, an Afghan teenager, a Holocaust survivor's son, and Benazir Bhutto, who discovers, days before her death, how she's been abandoned by the United States at her moment of greatest need. They are all testing American values at a time of peril, and discovering solutions—human solutions—to so much that has gone wrong. For anyone hoping to exercise truly informed consent and begin the process of restoring the values and hope—along with the moral clarity and earned optimism—at the heart of the American tradition, The Way of the World is a must-read.

America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It

Mark Steyn

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 483 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

You are better off reading the Book of Revelation 1 out of 5 stars.
3 of 9 people found this review helpful.

Instead of the Red Scare (those damn pinko commies) we now have the Islamic threat. Read "The Concept of the Political" by Carl Schmidtt in order to understand the necessity of creating an existentially threatening 'other' for the sake of reinforcing national cohesion and identity. As some may know, Schmidtt was influential (especially in his critique of liberalism) in both National Socialist circles and in neo-conservative circles.
This is a re-hashing of Huntington, only Steyn is even more alarmist and pessimistic (who could have thought it was possible) in his 'prophetic' (read sarcasm) judgments. If you want a real book on the decline of empire that has a historical perspective beyond the past 15 years, then read Kennedy's "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers".

A Must Read if you care about your future 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Mark Steyn tells it like it is. Western Europe is in decline; Canada is in decline; America is on the brink. There is nothing politically correct about Mark's discourse. It's a frank discussion about how the Islamist/Muslim world is in its ascendancy while we (the West) are in decline based largely on current demographics. It scared the heck out of me, and if I can do nothing else I can at least spread the word. We need to react before our way of life, our culture is no more.America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It

The True Story of the Bilderberg Group

Daniel Estulin

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Total reviews: 43 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Delving into a world once shrouded in complete mystery and impenetrable security, this investigative report provides a fascinating account of the annual meetings of the world’s most powerful people—the Bilderberg Group. Since its inception in 1954 at the Bilderberg Hotel in the small Dutch town of Oosterbeek, the Bilderberg Group has been comprised of European prime ministers, American presidents, and the wealthiest CEOs of the world, all coming together to discuss the economic and political future of humanity. The press has never been allowed to attend, nor have statements ever been released on the attendees' conclusions or discussions, which have ramifications on the citizens of the world. Using methods that resemble the spy tactics of the Cold War—and in several instances putting his own life on the line—the author did what no one else has managed to achieve: he learned what was being said behind the closed doors of the opulent hotels and has made it available to the public for the first time.

Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World

Patrick J. Buchanan

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Subjects -> History -> Military -> World War II -> Europe

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Total reviews: 80 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Were World Wars I and II—which can now be seen as a thirty-year paroxysm of slaughter and destruction—inevitable? Were they necessary wars? Were the bloodiest and most devastating conflicts ever suffered by mankind fated by forces beyond men’s control? Or were they products of calamitous failures of judgment? In this monumental and provocative history, Patrick Buchanan makes the case that, if not for the blunders of British statesmen—Winston Churchill first among them—the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust might have been avoided and the British Empire might never have collapsed into ruins. Half a century of murderous oppression of scores of millions under the iron boot of Communist tyranny might never have happened, and Europe’s central role in world affairs might have been sustained for many generations.

Among the British and Churchillian blunders were:

• The secret decision of a tiny cabal in the inner Cabinet in 1906 to take Britain straight to war against Germany, should she invade France
• The vengeful Treaty of Versailles that muti- lated Germany, leaving her bitter, betrayed, and receptive to the appeal of Adolf Hitler
• Britain’s capitulation, at Churchill’s urging, to American pressure to sever the Anglo- Japanese alliance, insulting and isolating Japan, pushing her onto the path of militarism and conquest
• The 1935 sanctions that drove Italy straight into the Axis with Hitler
• The greatest blunder in British history: the unsolicited war guarantee to Poland of March 1939—that guaranteed the Second World War
• Churchill’s astonishing blindness to Stalin’s true ambitions.

Certain to create controversy and spirited argument, Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War” is a grand and bold insight into the historic failures of judgment that ended centuries of European rule and guaranteed a future no one who lived in that vanished world could ever have envisioned.

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

Tim Weiner

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 127 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The omitted organizations 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

The omitted organizations

Tim Weiner's book on the CIA is excellent, so is Ron Suskind's "one percent doctrine", they are in fact too good. Why has it suddenly become possible to write such self critical books? It seems, they would have been impossible a few years ago. We must ask what has happened that make them possible, and who profits from them. I am not suggesting a conspiracy, certainly not on the part of these two authors, but I am asking why it suddenly has become possible to find all these excellent sources in such large numbers. The answer is in part found by looking at what and who are not criticized. People of influence feel they can talk more freely.

Weiner's book, besides delivering a crushing critic of the CIA, has little critic of all other parties and organizations involved, other intelligence organizations, the previous presidential administrations and the multinational companies, almost to the point where he gives the picture of a CIA operating in a vacuum, all by itself, like a dog which has run away from home. The book has a message which is shared by many power centers in the US: the CIA has not been worth the money and must be redone (human rights are secondary in the book).

Suskind's book has the same accusing, almost prosecuting, form as Weiner's. This is clearly the expression of a US ready to deal with two organizations in its centre; in the first case the CIA, in the other the Bush administration. The US sense of crises has been strengthened by the failure in Iraq and now with the ongoing financial crises. Americans have always been good at detecting problems and making changes, even if it means doing the same failures again.

Will these processes lead to actual prosecutions in the case of members of the Bush administration? Probably not, at least not in the US. (Cheney like Kissinger may avoid personal trips to Europe). Will they lead to a fundamental change in US foreign policy, less aggressive? Probably not, no leading power regardless of its nationality has been willing to let go of an upper hand. The weakness lies in part in human nature in part in the nation state logic. It is not a typical American problem, or even a Rebublican. unfortunately not, it would have been so much easier.

Weiner's book is a clear message to the next administration to redo the CIA (again). To make this transmission easier he has, intentionally or not, omitted many of the organizations which work in symbiosis with the CIA. This is the book's biggest weakness as a critical piece of work.

Editorial Review:

With shocking revelations that made headlines in papers across the country, Pulitzer-Prize-winner Tim Weiner gets at the truth behind the CIA and uncovers here why nearly every CIA Director has left the agency in worse shape than when he found it; and how these profound failures jeopardize our national security.

Epicenter: Why Current Rumblings in the Middle East Will Change Your Future

Joel C. Rosenberg

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Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> Christianity -> Theology -> Eschatology

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Total reviews: 178 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

With over one million novels in print, New York Times best-selling author Joel C. Rosenberg has been called "eerily prophetic" and a "modern Nostradamus" for his uncanny ability to write political thrillers that come true. In his first nonfiction book, this evangelical Christian from an Orthodox Jewish heritage takes readers on an unforgettable journey through prophecy and current events into the future of Iraq after Saddam, Russia after Communism, Israel after Arafat, and Christianity after radical Islam. You won't want to miss Joel's exclusive interviews with Israeli, Palestinian, and Russian leaders, and previously classified CIA and White House documents. Similar to the approach Joel takes in his novels, his desire is to draw readers into stories, anecdotes, and predictions in a way that builds confidence that allows Joel to share his faith in Jesus Christ and the reliability of Scripture as a guide to understanding the past and the future.

Drawing on his experience in Washington, his own exclusive interviews with world leaders, and his astute political acumen, Joel makes sense of the events surrounding the Middle East. He connects information in a way that will make you understand and really care about the world's most important events and how they impact your life--from gas prices to your bank account.

Epicenter is about:

• Change--big changes, dramatic changes, changes that will transform the world as we know it
• Answers--what the changes are underway in the world's most important countries
• Insight--readers will understand the trajectory of world events by being taken inside the governments of Iran, Iraq, Russia, China, and more
• Accessibility--aimed for a wide audience in both the general and Christian markets
• Faith--Joel shares his faith in Jesus Christ and the reliability of Scripture

Epicenter will answer questions like:

• Will Iraq go from bad to worse?
• Will Israel and her Arab neighbors find peace, or is another major Middle East war just around the corner?
• If the new, post-Soviet Russia is our friend, why is the Kremlin creating a new class of thermonuclear weapons and building an alliance with radical Islam?

Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia

Ahmed Rashid

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Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> 21st Century
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> General

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The #1 New York Times bestselling author provides a shocking analysis of the crisis in Pakistan and the renewed radicalism threatening Afghanistan and the West.

Ahmed Rashid is “Pakistan’s best and bravest reporter” (Christopher Hitchens). His unique knowledge of this vast and complex region allows him a panoramic vision and nuance that no Western writer can emulate.

His book Taliban first introduced American readers to the brutal regime that hijacked Afghanistan and harbored the terrorist group responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Now, Rashid examines the region and the corridors of power in Washington and Europe to see how the promised nation building in these countries has pro-gressed. His conclusions are devastating: An unstable and nuclear-armed Pakistan, a renewed al’ Qaeda profiting from a booming opium trade, and a Taliban resurgence and reconquest. While Iraq continues to attract most of American media and military might, Rashid argues that Pakistan and Afghanistan are where the conflict will finally be played out and that these failing states pose a graver threat to global security than the Middle East.

Benazir Bhutto’s assassination and the crisis in Pakistan are only the beginning. Rashid assesses what her death means for the region and the future. Rashid has unparalleled access to the figures in this global drama, and provides up-to-the-minute analysis better than anyone else. Descent Into Chaos will do for Central Asia what Thomas Rick’s Fiasco did for Iraq — offer a blistering critique of the Bush administration and an impassioned call to correct our failed strategy in the region.

The Prize : The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power

Daniel Yergin

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 136 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Fantastic read..but.. 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Truly worth the pulitizer prize, a great read, a great view of history..but..don't buy the paperback. This book literally fell out of it's binding before I got through the first one hundred pages. By the time I got to the epilogue I had little more than a pile of loose pages. I don't own the hard cover, but I can tell you that the soft cover is a piece of junk. Too bad the binders didn't respect the greatness of the book.

Editorial Review:

Daniel Yergin's first prize-winning book, Shattered Peace, was a history of the Cold War. Afterwards the young academic star joined the energy project of the Harvard Business School and wrote the best-seller Energy Future. Following on from there, The Prize, winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, is a comprehensive history of one of the commodities that powers the world--oil. Founded in the 19th century, the oil industry began producing kerosene for lamps and progressed to gasoline. Huge personal fortunes arose from it, and whole nations sprung out of the power politics of the oil wells. Yergin's fascinating account sweeps from early robber barons like John D. Rockefeller, to the oil crisis of the 1970s, through to the Gulf War.